Another classic Dragon cover, this time by Clyde Caldwell, and starting off with a really long guest editorial by Gary Gygax, where he gripes about Origin and waxes lyrical about Gen Con for three full pages, this is the kind of backroom business that would really have been better if left out of Dragon magazine. However, 40 years later, it’s actually pretty interesting to see the internal tensions in the gaming hobby in general, and I think Gary has a point, but it just feels a bit uncouth, that’s all. 

Moving on to actual subjects relevant to the games, Gygax gives us a section on possible new classes and subclasses for a next edition of AD&D, asking for reader feedback on them, which is pretty good. Moving to the World of Greyhawk we get more information on some regions of that setting, namely the Spindrift Sound and Isles, the Prelacy of Almor and the Kingdom of Nyrond. Again it mostly covers military matters, but there are some tidbits of lore spread throughout the article that make it more interesting than usual. 

Len Lakofka and Christopher Townsend bring articles about weapon durability and alternatives on how to handle that. We get new creatures, both in Featured Creatures (Baku, Phoenix) but also some other chromatic dragons (Yellow, Orange and Purple) in a separate piece. A big highlight of this issue is also Ed Greenwood’s long article on how to create law systems for your settings with some examples from Forgotten Realms. An article about how War can motivate characters during campaigns closes out the relevant D&D items.