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Dragon #101: Interesting for gaming history, not so much for content
Dragon Magazine Larry Elmore Roger Raupp TSR
Again, I bring you my weekly Dragon review, this time with number 101. The issue in question is one of those magazines I actually owned first-hand as a teen, and so I know it rather well, even if it doesn’t resonate with me.First, let me go a bit into content, but it came out in September 1985 and had an editorial note from Gary Gygax that has some incredibly interesting things in it. Gary speaks first about a D&D movie that would come from DDEC, the entertainment arm of TSR that he’d been spearheading in Hollywood for a couple of...
Castle Zagyg: 'The Upper Works': A final masterpiece from the old DM himself.
Castles & Crusades Gary Gygax OD&D Peter Bradley Troll Lord Games
A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity; Perhaps the greatest collection of play-testers ever!
AD&D Modules Bill Willingham David LaForce Jeff Dee TSR
I’m going to be honest here, I’ve never played any of the A series of modules, and for that I feel horrible. I've owned these modules for twenty-two years, and begged my DM Mark to run them on several occasion, but since he doesn't own them, it just never happened.Truly, I feel sick over that, especially when digging through A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity this week for AotG. I mean, just start out with the title, ‘Slave Pits of the Undercity’! It is yet another example of a Robert E. Howard theft, or perhaps Fritz Leiber. I’m seriously freaking...
GW6 Gamma World: Alpha Factor; another odd fail in art for Gamma World
Clyde Caldwell Gamma World Jim Holloway TSR
I have a love of Gamma World that can be traced back to my Cold War infatuation with nuclear oblivion, so make no mistake that I take a good deal of pride in my collection of post-apocalyptic RPGs, as well as my own creations Future Warrior and my After the Apocalypse card game.That said, I’d have to admit that my favorite edition of Gamma World would be the 3rd Edition, and today I’m going to talk a bit about Kim Eastland’s Alpha Factor.Written in 1986, this module is 38 pages of introductory procedure that sets new characters in the Gamma...
Artist Spotlight: The Art of Stephen Fabian #1
Artist Spotlight Stephen Fabian
Today marks the start of my ‘Featured Artist’ posts here on Art of the Genre. This will be a continuing series, and as it is all about the art, there should be multiple posts for each artist. So who gets the honor of being my first artist? Well, the venerable Stephen Fabian, that’s who. Born in 1930, Stephen has been an incredible contributor to science fiction and fantasy for over the past sixty years. He’s received the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 and has had several Hugo nominations throughout his illustrious career. And yes, he’s also been an...