The contents of this issue of Dragon announce themselves in the cover, there is plenty of banditry and malfeasance inside this volume, which is heavily geared towards AD&D, which seems to be more and more the case as other games by TSR become more of an afterthought. 

Gary Gygax has a big participation in this issue, contributing a number of different articles and starting out a column of “Featured Creatures”, monsters for official use with AD&D, and a preview of the second volume of the Monster Manual that would be upcoming. In this issue we get the Devas. Gygax also brings us an article on the Barbarian and his work is also reflected in the Robert J. Kuntz penned article on events of the Eastern and Southern Flanaess, giving more depth to the World of Greyhawk. As usual this is an article very focused on military strength and movements, which isn’t really what I’m most interested in. 

Len Lakofka writes an article on how to make Charisma matter, seeing as it is very often seen as a dump stat. Lastly Roger E. Moore gives two great articles, one on Bandits as NPCs and another finishing up the series on Races of D&D with an article on Humanoids (Goblins, Kobolds, Gnolls and Hobgoblins) and their gods. Ed Greenwood talks about how to create a campaign world, something he’s uniquely qualified to do, and Gygax pans two movies in the critics sections, Conan the Barbarian (which is an awesome movie, sorry Gary) and The Sword and the Sorcerer, promising that D&D would have a “Star Wars or Indiana Jones” quality film by the mid of the 80s. Yeah… right.