With a great Tim Hildebrant cover, eschewing the usual frame that is kind of ugly and extending the image to the full page, this is a hint of what goes on inside this issue of Dragon. By far the longest article inside is a profile and interview of Tim Hildebrandt as a fantasy artist, which while not dealing at all with D&D or TTRPGs at all would still overlap with the interests of some of the readers. 

The magazine starts out (after the usual editorial and reader’s mail) with a trio of articles on AD&D tournaments as well as all the trouble that arises from them. It’s easy to understand why there would be problems with tournaments in a game in which the DMs judgement is always subjective and is very far from being a level playing ground for players. I never really got the idea of AD&D as a competitor sport, in fact one of its big selling points is exactly the idea of collaborative storytelling where everyone is a winner because what you win is the experience of playing it. But ok, it was clearly a big thing at conventions. It sure seemed to create more controversy and unhappy players than anything, but ok.  

We also get takes on the NPC classes of the Samurai (again!) and the Alchemist (again, again!), we have to remember that these were the days when if you missed an issue you were likely to never have access to that article again. The Samurai was covered early in the run of Dragon and therefore you couldn’t even get it as a back issue, anyway this is a different take on the character. We also have articles on how to create a topography for the campaign worlds, an article on the Wish spell (another one!), a good article by Ed Greenwood on how players don’t need to know the rules of the game (that’s the DMs job) and one of the highlights here is the first appearance of the What’s New With Phil & Dixie comic which would be around until 2003! Gotta love Phil Foglio.