Hey, look! It’s the issue of Dragon that came out the month I was born! Happy birthday to me! In this issue Gary Gygax continues his series of articles that introduce cantrips into AD&D and this time he brings us cantrips for illusionists, more interesting as a concept that will have a long life in the game (up until today, at least) than for the spells themselves, most of which have in time disappeared and been replaced by more workable ones, it’s still a pretty cool thing.

This issue also includes a couple of articles on unarmed combat and the use of exotic weapons. This is pretty useful stuff, with tables and information on how to include and develop these fighting systems in the context of the game. For those who, like me, are particularly into lore and roleplaying rather than the minutiae of weapons there is a whole section on Gnomes as a continuation of the articles on the different races in AD&D. Covering Gnomes and Gnome deities, even if most of the information is taken from non-D&D sources, we do get some information on what makes gnomes unique and their main god: Garl Glittergold.

As a bonus for D&D players we get not only a free adventure module, something which was by now common with Dragon, but also 80 monster cards for DMs to have easy access to their stats. As a curiosity we also get a pretty middling review of Call of Cthulhu, which had just come out in the review section of the magazine, they shouldn’t have worried, it did become pretty successful. As usual we close off the issue with pretty funny What’s New and Wormy comics.