Welcome to 1985! We start off with the January issue of Dragon (if you’ve noticed I usually start each month with Dragon before going on to modules and other magazines, it helps me keep track of where we are at in time). As usual this issue of Dragon is a bit of a mixed bag, mostly good stuff but one which is pretty bad.

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first, the centrepiece of this issue is “The Gypsy Train”, a short adventure module for you to introduce into your adventures all about “Gypsies”. As you can imagine it isn’t the most sensitive treatment of the subject, mainly trading in racist stereotypes with headings like “High Prices, Light Fingers” which characterizes the Roma people as gougers and thieves. Not great. This article isn’t a complete loss, however, the article includes a model for a caravan which you can cut out and build, which is pretty neat.

Other articles in the issue are more useful for D&D players, and these include a really useful pronunciation guide by Frank Mentzer teaching you how to pronounce everything from Aarakocra to Zugtmoy. Gygax brings us rules for high-level Druids and Ed Greenwood the Ecology of the Eye of the Deep. Stephen Inniss brings us an article on how high and how far characters can jump and lastly we get some great comics with Trampier’s Wormy and Elmore’s SnarfQuest!