I don't have to tell you how awesome my players are, I've mentioned that numerous times here at the Home Brew. Clay, who is now running our Savage Worlds game, picked up this little relic from his home state of Nebraska. Cover by Erol Otus no less too!Now I'm sure we've all walked through the pages of Dragon Magazines loaded with classic treasures and anecdotes of bygone eras and this one is no different. A great little article by Gygax about his 200+ page Temple of Elemental Evil Module (release date pushed to early 1982), there's a great little Basic D&D dungeon, and dinosaurs galore. This issue falls just after that imaginary border-line of the Dragon when it began to be more of a promotion for AD&D and less about OD& D (great post about this over at Original Editions).
But what I always find more interesting in these 'vintage' magazine (comics and pulps too) are the ads. For all you sociologists out there, the ads can give you a great snapshot of the underlying culture surrounding the publication.
Let's take a look, shall we? (click to enbiggen)
Great little ad illustration by Gene Day for a Wild West RPG.
I love all of the ads for the hobby shops carrying RPG products. Truly a golden age!
And you thought Play By Post took forever!
Get you geek on with a cool dragon tee-shirt then get beat up wearing a not-so-cool Unicorn belt buckle.
I don't think I ever knew what the flip this was. It looked ugly as hell. But it was a gaming aid so it couldn't be all that bad, right?
Back cover ad for some old school computer gaming action!(Check out James' Crush, Crumble and Chomp Epyx ad)
And finally, this beautiful ad for White Dwarf illustrated by Emmanuel, cover artist for The Fiend Folio (and new banner image for The Warlock's Home Brew).
