We get to number 16 of The Dragon, and as has been the case recently it is getting more and more D&D focused, with quite a bit of fiction thrown in the middle there as well. As usual for this time period there is a lot of talk about pantheons and gods as well as establishing their stats for D&D. This isn’t something that really stuck around, but it takes up quite a chunk of the magazine, with a reply to criticism of the Cthulhu Mythos stats in the last issue as well as 3 pages on Ancient Near East pantheons. 

We get a new class here, the Ninja, which we get a warning that it’s more for NPC than for player characters, as it is a bit overpowered. Then we get to the more interesting article in this issue, and it’s one in which Gary Gygax is profoundly pissed off about some players and critics of the game, writing three double columned pages on amateur publications and how crap they are. He also seems to really hate the idea of critical hits and fails at 1 and 20… something which would become common practice (and possibly part of the established rules in the upcoming D&D One).

We have a good article on why Magic Users and Clerics can’t use certain weapons, and what to do when they insist on using them and an article on balancing the game even for DMs who let their players have loads of powerful items and so forth. The issue is topped off with fiction and comic strips as usual.