This is an exciting issue of Dragon! So, we’ve known for a while that Ed Greenwood has been on staff for Dragon magazine, at the moment he is a Contributing Editor to the magazine, and has been since the start of 1981, before this he had contributed plenty of Bestiary and Bazaar of the Bizarre entries, and people who know the Forgotten Realms might have recognized stuff in those entries. However, as far as I know this is the first time that details about the campaign world show up in print in official TSR material and actually named as The Forgotten Realms.

In the article “In the Merry Month of… Mirtul?” Greenwood talks about several concepts and ideas that will be staples of the Forgotten Realms setting which will only become an official AD&D setting in the late 80s. Ideas explored in the article, which is about how to create a calendar, include “tendays” as a substitution for weeks as well as the names of the months and feasts in the Forgotten Realms setting, including the Shieldmeet during leap years. 

So, although this is the most fun thing in the issue, the regular features are all here as well, and we have articles including a D&D exam (a quiz), ideas for adventuring in elemental planes a special look at the Thief class in Leomund’s Tiny Hut and the usual comics.