The fifth volume of reprints from the magazine that had quickly become a bible for D&D players and DMs, this brings together a bunch of articles which were printed in now out-of-print issues of the magazine, but which were still of interest to players.

The focus on this volume changes from rules intensive articles to articles more about world creation and as such the two great writers of articles on those subjects for Dragon really dominate the contents page, Roger E. Moore and particularly Ed Greenwood who would soon be bringing his Forgotten Realms setting into the light of day in an official capacity in TSR. 

What is very telling, however, are not only the articles which are included in the magazine, but also what is excluded. In the 20 articles in this collection there is not a single one by Gary Gygax who in fact dominated the content of the four previous volumes. This is never mentioned, but it’s hard not to see in this a sign of the deteriorating relationship between TSR and Gygax, so much so that he would abandon the company completely by October of this year. In fact when this volume came out in mid-1986 we were at the height of the legal battle between Gygax and Lorraine Williams which would uphold her new position as the head of TSR and end with Gary abandoning the company.