Another jam-packed issue of Dragon now extending to over 50 pages of content with AD&D taking up more and more space within the magazine. It starts off with an article about how to develop a pantheon for your own campaign setting, but curiously there is no title to this piece, it cleary seems to be a printer error as there should be a title on the image that serves as header but someone fumbled that ball. However, the table of contents does tell us it’s supposed to be called “Of The Gods”. 

Gods are a pretty big thing in this issue (much like devils were in issue 28) with other articles on the origins of the Norse Pantheon and The Mythos of Oceania in D&D. It’s pretty interesting how in the 70s DMs and players were just supposed to adopt real-world gods into the game, hence all the “mythos” articles and stuff like the Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes supplement for the Original D&D. We have to remember, however, that by this time in 1979 there still was no Campaign setting available with its own fictional pantheon for D&D use. The Greyhawk sourcebook would only come out in 1980, although Gygax had been mentioning it in the DMG and other material for a while already, as per usual there were some delays.

Back to the magazine, you also get good articles on how to set up Inns and Taverns in your adventure, rewarding heroism in D&D and the usual columns like Giants of the Earth, the Bestiary and Bazaar of the Bizarre. Lastly you get the return of Wormy with a recap of the comic strip and an advert for The Best of Dragon which is just coming out and which we will cover next!