The Draconic Archeologist - A Final Look at the Strategic Review

ChicagoWiz asked in my comments to my previous post for my opinion on the Strategic Review run, now that I've read them.  My feeling is this:  it makes for a very telling snapshot of TSR during the time period.

Over the course of 7 issues, it goes from 6 pages to 20 pages - and it about to be reborn as The Dragon.  Initially, it was little more then a newsletter.  In the end, it was a magazine.

It gave us first view of new classes, races and magic items.  At the same time, it shared space with war games.  As TSR saw that D&D was turning into it's cash cow, they needed a magazine that could be devoted to it (and have a name that was a bit more reflective of it's contents).  Strategic Review was a fine name for a war gaming magazine but not really appropriate for a magazine devoting more and more space to Dungeons & Dragons.

First and foremost, one must remember that EGG was the primary voice of the company, and when he felt vocal on a subject, he surely let himself be heard. As an example, here is a snippet from the editorial of issue 2:  Donald Featherstone once said in WARGAMER’S NEWSLETTER that he believed Arnold Hendrick’s chief talent and claim to fame lay in his “pinching” of Fletcher Pratt’s Naval Wargame — alluding in all likelihood to similarities between Mr. Pratt’s game and the set of rules for naval miniatures authored by Mr.
Hendrick. I concurred with what was said in WARGAMER’S NEWSLETTER, and when the good Mr. Hendrick “reviewed” CHAINMAIL in a highly uncomplimentary manner I ignored what was written, for surely most hobbyists could be assumed to be able to read this “review” for what it was worth and in light of Mr. Hendrick’s talents otherwise. As an example of the comments he made regarding CHAINMAIL, the most amusing was his assertion that heavy cavalry was rated too high, imagine! In a period where the armored horseman dominated the field of battle, heavy horse are too strong! Anyway, the learned Mr. Hendrick subsequently “reviewed” DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, again in a very uncomplimentary manner — after all, he had gone so far as to play a game of D&D as a Cleric, completely armed with such edged weapons as spear and arrows . . . Again, this so called “review” was so obviously inaccurate and biased that I ignored it completely, although numbers of letters and telephone calls from irate D&D fans who had read the comments and wished to let me know that the “review” outraged them assured me that Mr. Hendrick would not escape totally unscathed. Eventually the magazine which retains Mr. Hendrick as a “reviewer” did print a contrary opinion — how could they ignore a counter-article written by Mr. James Oden, President of Heritage Models, Inc.? This brings me to the point of this editorial. The axe that Mr. Hendrick has been grinding so loudly and long has been exposed.

I don't think you can get more Gary Gygax then the above piece.  Classic.  Simply classic.

I enjoyed my reading of the Strategic Review.  It was like reading a piece of history.  The fun kind of history ;)

The Draconic Archeologist - Closing Up the Strategic Review With #7

Strategic Review #7 (or Vol. II, No.2) is the last issue of Strategic Review before morphing into The Dragon.  This last issue clocks in at 24 pages (including covers, so really 20) which makes it about 3 times the size of issue #1.

So, what does issue 7 offer us, the OSR or Old School gamer?

Well, EGG gives us an article on D&D magic, but really, its more then that.  It's a critique of the magic-user class and it's early players.  Heck, it could even be seen as a critique of power gamers and rules lawyers that try to distort the meaning of a rule.  That being said, EGG states that a Magic Mouth spell can cast spells that are solely verbal.  I think I missed that first go round.

Joe Fisher gives us Part 1 of a series of articles - Hints for D&D Judges:  Towns
In it he gives the starting Judge (when did Dungeon Master become the "in" title?) some pointers on providing a starting town for the new party of adventurers.  We would consider the hints very basic these days, but those were very basic days.

Mighty Magic Miscellany gives us some artifacts this time around:  The Cup and Talisman of Akbar, The Staff of the Priest Kings and The Brazen Bottle.

The Creature Features gives us a first look at the Catoblepas and the Denebian Slime Devil (of which the less said, the better).

EGG gives us a second article:  D&D is Only as Good as the DM - Let me quote from the opening paragraph: Successful play of D & D is a blend of desire, skill and luck. Desire is often
initiated by actually participating in a game. It is absolutely a reflection of the
referee’s ability to maintain an interesting and challenging game. Skill is a blend
of knowledge of the rules and game background as applied to the particular game
circumstances favored by the referee. Memory or recall is often a skill function.
Luck is the least important of the three, but it is a factor in successful play
nonetheless. Using the above criteria it would seem that players who have attained
a score or more of levels in their respective campaigns are successful indeed. This
is generally quite untrue. Usually such meteoric rise simply reflects an incompetent
Dungeonmaster.


To summarize - slow down the advancement if character level is going too fast.  Don't give away expo like its a xmass bonus.  Remember:  By requiring players to work for experience, to earn their treasure, means that the opportunity to retain interest will remain.  Words of wisdom.


And thus end our review of the Strategic Review.

The Draconic Archeologist: Sing It To Me Baby! - Strategic Review #6

Strategic Review #6 (or if you are following at home, Volume 2 #1) gives us the first view of the Bard class for D&D.  If you have your AD&D Plater's Handbook, you might want to refresh your memory– or not.  The AD&D Bard broke more rules... lets just say it broke many rules and was a fairly broken class.

The D&D Bard was a jack of all trades.  He fought as well as a cleric (but without the weapon restrictions), he has the abilities of a thief half his level (rounded down), get's access to magic-user spells (but at a much slower pace), can charm, legend lore... he really is a jack of all trades.

We get some magic instruments for the ladies man too.  Not bad for his first showing.  Too bad it went down hill for the class with AD&D.

I barely remember the old Dungeon! board game.  One of my non-gaming friends had it in junior high, and the few times I played it was with him.  If you still have a copy, Dwarves and Clerics are added to the mix in this issue.

Sage Advice gives us  some corrections for the Greyhawk supplement.

Crap, almost forgot the Alignment map that I skipped over in my Bardic excitement.  Apparently Werewolves are almost (but not quite) Lawful Neutral.  Even better is Liches are on both the LG and LN side.  I could really dig being an all powerful undead Lawful Good Lich Paladin.  Hmmm, Paladins are REALLY REALLY Lawful Good, Liches are just Lawful Good.  Ah well, there goes that hole in the alignment chart I was hoping to drive a semi thru...

The Draconic Archeologist: Catching Up - Strategic Review #4 & #5

I'm a bit behind, so today we will start with a Double Feature – Issues 4 and 5 of Strategic Review are up for viewing with my OSR / D&D Goggles.  Let's see what useful stuff Gary gives us, shall we?

Hmmm... it looks like Greg Costikyan planned to publish a D&D fanzine.  I wonder if that ever got off the ground.  He even asked TSR's approval before starting and got a thumbs up.  Whoda' thunk it?

Gary's Castle & Crusade column features a few more pole arms.  It's a nice history lesson, but how many do you really need for the game?

Hey, look... over there!  See it?  No?  He must be invisible cause he's the first Illusionist.  Yes, the first view of the Illusionist class.  Remember: "Although severely limited in the number of magical items they can employ, Illusionists make up for this restriction by the power of their magic."  That's why it's always been such a popular class... so much more powerful then Magic-users.

For the fans of Empire of the Petal Throne, M.A.R. Barker has a three page article called Tsolyani Names Without Tears.  It so you can create authentic sounding Tsolyani names.  Oh, and a chart for the new alphabet.  If you are an EPT fan, this probably rocks.  If you are not...

The Creature Feature introduces the Clay Golem.

Might Magic Miscelleny (spell check says it should be Miscellany) gives us "Ioun" Stones.  Pretty cool background on these: "Seeing that we offer so many new monsters herein we thought it only fair to occasionally include unusual, extraordinary, and useful new magical goodies also. FLASHING SWORDS! #1 (Dell, 1973) contained four excellent swords & sorceryyarns, including “Morreion” by Jack Vance. In this tale there was a magical item of highly unusual value — IOUN stones. Mr. Vance was kind enough to allow us to enlarge somewhat upon his creations and list them as a D&D “Miscellaneous Magic” item."

Thus ends SR #4 for our purposes.  Let us move on to SR#5.

Ah, yes, Finally an issue with a proper cover.  It might be a wizard in a goofy hat, but its a cool looking wizard in a goofy hat.

We start with some short autobiographies of the major players at TSR: EGG, Brian Blume, Robert Kuntz, Theron Kuntz and Tim Kask.  Interesting stuff.

Sturmgeshutz and Sorcery is a mashup of WW2 wargaming and D&D.  This is set up where neither side initially  knew there was a cross-genre encounter going on.

Just to give a peek, I'm going to give you the background that the SS and D&D sides were given:

SS side: "There has been unusual resistance activity in this area, and in the last few days a squad of Security troops were wiped out in a battle with them. Only one old man, bearded, and with no weapons, was found at the scene of the battle. From his dress and general appearance it would seem that he was a Russian clergyman — probably there to incite the troops to greater bravery as the Communist commissars have failed in this respect."

D&D side: "Your able lieutenants Grustiven the Warlock and the Lama Goocz have failed to return from an exploration of an area of unusual nature — just west of your castle a thick fog sprang up and has been obscuring vision since then. Dispell Magic failed to affect the area, and your henchmen were ordered to investigate, for it is possible that some Lawful enemy is at work, using the mist to screen gathering troops. Unfortunately, your strongest fighters and 200 orcs are elsewhere warring with a Neutral Lord who insulted you, so you will have to make do with the forces on hand. An orc detailed to patrol the edge of the fog area has just reported that unusual sounds have been issuing from the area — he  described them as: “low growls, the clanking of chains, and a deep humming,” but who can trust a stupid orc?"

I could see this scenario as a blast to play out.  D&D didn't go far from it's war-gaming roots.

Mighty Magic Miscellany (they corrected it!) gives us the Robe of Scintillating Color and Prayer Beads.

The Creature Feature gives us first looks and future classics: Rakshasa, The Slithering Tracker and The Trapper.

The Draconic Archeologist: Rounding Up the Monsters - Strategic Review #3

Strategic Review Issue 3 clocks in at 8 pages, but it doesn't take us longer then page 2 to find some D&D goodies.  Here we get the first looks at:

   The Yeti - Ehhh
   The Shambling Mound - Iconic D&D baddie
   The Leprechaun - another ehhh
   The Shrieker - the wandering monster magnet
   The Ghost - time to grow old
   Naga - describes Guardian, Water and Spirit Nagas
   The Wind Walker - ethereal, immune to weapon weapon damage
   The Piercer - caverns were never the same again
   The Lurker Above - your living death from above trap

Next up is the Monster Reference Table Addition, Hostile and Benign Creatures - its a joke list including Weregamers (Wererommels, Weregandalfs and the such), Grifferees, Hippygriffs - you get the idea.  Pretty much filler, but was probably entraining to those with wargaming roots.

Bunch of wargaming articles, listing of small press publishers / fanzine (SASE and / or a few cents) and listing of DMs and Gaming Clubs.

James Ward has an article on Deserted Cities of Mars, drawing on the John Carter of Mars series.  It includes some charts for generating Martian architecture, but I  don't think they have much rip-able value for most OSR games.  Still, more value in this article then recent issues of Crusader.

The Draconic Archeologist - Picking Apart Strategic Review #2

Strategic Review #2 clocks in at a whopping 8 pages. Still, there are some interesting things for D&D players (once we hit The Dragon, the amount of relevant gaming material should increase exponentially).

We are given an example of D&D combat, to help explain the system for players that don't have Chainmail in their gaming background. Heck, it confused things for me after reading it. I'm just glad the OSR has represented the rules in a user friendly fashion.

Later, we are presented the Ranger Class. My point of reference is AD&D 1e, the system I cut my gaming teeth on. So, from what I see, much is like the AD&D class: 2HD at 1st level, 10HD max, crap load of random followers at high levels, magic user and cleric (later druid) spells at higher levels... the one thing that stuck out was experience. Rangers don't get extra expo for a high prime stat, but they earn 4 points for every 3 earned thru 8th level. That's a 33% bonus! At level 8 that no longer get that bonus, but the damage is done. They get an extra HD from the start AND extra expo. Oh, and the article refers to them as a week class until level 8. They are a strong class with high survivability right out of the gate.

Can't forget the nicely illustrated article on pole arms, one of gaming's most misunderstood weapons in the early years, at least if you didn't have a wargaming background.

That's all for now. Next, some iconic D&D monsters see first light.

The Draconic Archeologist: Sifting the Remains of The Strategic Review Issue 1

You have to start somewhere, and what better place then the beginning. The first issue The Strategic Review clocked in at a mere 6 pages. Despite the small size and the large amount of space allocated to war-gaming, there is a nice amount of stuff of high interest to players of Dungeons & Dragons.

Under the Creature Feature tag, we are introduced to the iconic D&D adversary: The Mind Flayer. Pretty cool, huh? Your Saving Throw is based upon distance and the defenders intelligence. Watch yourself, you may just get Mind Blasted ;)

Two and a half pages are devoted to EGG's Solo Dungeon Adventure Charts. These seem to be the same chart (or very similar) to the ones I enjoyed in the 1e DMG. They were a fun way to randomly design a dungeon and a less fun way to try to solo D&D. Of note is these charts are copyright EGG, not Tactical Studies Rules.

One of the items advertised by TSR on the last page is 3 sets of prints (5 prints per set) of art from the original boxed D&D set. I don't think I've heard of these before, let seen any for sale. Anyone have any further info on these?