With yet another Denis Beauvais chess cover, the third in a trilogy and probably my favourite of the bunch, this is a pretty good issue, focused on D&D and with a nice variety of articles and content for both the basic and advanced versions of the game. 

Among the various articles we have a new NPC in the Sentinel, new magical shields in an article penned by Ed Greenwood in which Elminster tells the tale of six legendary shields from the Realms. We also have an article dissecting the XP system in AD&D and we also get the fourth part in the gods of Suel series, fleshing out Greyhawk’s pantheon. 

Dragon magazine is by now a well known quantity, a sturdy source of new content every month and pretty much invaluable to players and particularly DMs at the time. By this time it’s pretty much firing on all cylinders, it might be a bit dull at times and an infusion of color would do it good, but that will come in time. However, at the moment you were always sure to find either useful or interesting content in each issue, most often both.