The October issue of Dragon magazine has a lighter horror theme than is usual for their Halloween period magazines, maybe this is due to the Satanic Panic being in full swing in 1981, but anyway this is still a really good issue.

This is a particularly fascinating issue if you are, like me, interested in lore and settings, in this case Forgotten Realms. Ed Greenwood brings us an article on how to design a pantheon of gods and as an example he brings us the pantheon he created for his own homebrew campaign setting which is called… you guessed it, Forgotten Realms. The pantheon is very close to that which would eventually see print some years later when it becomes an official part of the TSR product line, with some changes like the goddess Tymora which is called Tyche here. We even get what I think is one of the first, if not the first, reference to Elminster and a quote by the famous wizard: “The wise man learns all that he needs to know and can find out, before he begins a task”. Thanks Elminster!

Nothing else in the issue is as interesting as Greenwood’s article, but we get articles on how to create ruins for players to explore, a system to make weapons breakable, Sage Advice centred on the undead (some Halloween theme there!). A module and the usual columns and comic strips. In this issue we say goodbye to Fineous Fingers, which is moving on from Dragon magazine.