Welcome to 1986! We’ll start this year as we start every month, with the new issue of Dragon magazine, one day Dragon will end and we’ll have to stop this habit, but that will only be in the far future of this list well into the next century. This time the cover is by with Robin Wood, the artist behind one of my favourite covers for dragon, back in #97 (#381 in our counting) which was the issue with the harp playing bard sitting in front of a Silver Dragon. This is also a good cover, with a magic user casting Lightning Bolt on a Giant Bat. Unfortunately we lost Robin Wood too soon in 2021.

Inside the magazine there is also some cool stuff. In Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Len Lakofka gives suggestions on how to better balance some of the new races that came out with Unearthed Arcana, so that they don’t upset the game, while Paul Vernon gives us an article on how to create level 0 NPCs. Staying with the level 0 theme, Ed Greenwood’s article covers the creation of level 0 treasure that you might get if you murder one of those NPCs. 

Geoffrey Meissner gives us an article on four different kinds of invisibility, while the review section covers a bunch of new books coming out, including one by TSR Endless Quest and later on Greyhawk novels author Rose Estes (Children of the Dragon). An article on parallel worlds and the featured short adventure module by Jim Bengston finish up the D&D content. There’s also profile articles on Kim Mohan and Pat Price, this issue.