The Articles of Dragon: "Taking the Sting Out of Poison"

One of the characteristics of the Silver Age of Dungeons & Dragons (1983–1989) is its concern with "realism," both in its worldbuilding and in the game rules intended to facilitate them. You can clearly see this in the kinds of articles Dragon magazine published during the mid to late 1980s, a great many of which I still remember to this day. "Living in a Material World," about which I posted last week, is a good example of what I'm talking about, but it's far from the only one.

Another excellent example is Chris Landsea's "Taking the Sting Out of Poison," which appeared in issue #81 (January 1984). At the start of his article, Landsea notes that his piece is, after a fashion, a response to two previous articles on poison that appeared in earlier issues of Dragon. The first is Charles Sagui's "Poison: From AA to XX" from issue #32 (December 1979) and the second is Larry DiTillio's "Poison: The Toxins of Cerilon" from issue #50 (March 1982). Landsea praises both articles for certain aspects of their treatment of poisons but he also has criticisms that he hopes to address in his own discussion of the topic.

The article is a long one – about ten pages, though not all the pages are full ones. Even so, it's an extensive examination of many aspects of poisons and poison use in AD&D, intended to be the definitive guide. In that respect, there's little question that the article does its job, albeit with a great deal more detail than I would care about today. There's nevertheless something strangely admirable about Landsea's thoroughness. He covers all the bases, from the different types of poisons (ingestive, insinuative, contact, poison gas, monster venom) to their relative strengths, how easy they are to detect, how long before they take effect, not to mention much more obvious matters like damage dealt on a successful or failed save. Landsea has probably thought more about poisons in AD&D than anyone else ever has and it shows.

Whether this is good or bad is, of course, a matter of personal preference. At the time "Taking the Sting Out of Poison" was released in early 1984, I was keen on it, if not necessarily enthusiastic. Like a lot of things, such as material components, I was very much in favor of these kinds of hyper-specific, hype-detailed rules additions – in principle. They appealed to my youthful sense of order and the desire to have an answer to any rules question that might come up in play. But did I ever use them in play? I don't think so. If I did, I can't recall it, which tells you everything you need to know about the utility of this kind of article.

Now, it's quite possible that I'm the odd one out here and that thousands of AD&D players were clamoring for an article like this in order to improve their adventures and campaigns. If so, I suspect they would be very happy with "Taking the Sting Out of Poison." It's an exhaustive and very well done examination of its chosen topic. I mean that without a hint of sarcasm. It's really good and, as I said, my youthful self respected all the hard work Chris Landsea clearly had done in writing it, even as I never made use of it. There's a whole genre of Dragon articles like this, consisting of well-written and researched treatments of narrow topics that probably never saw much use at anyone's table, but, to quote Grandpa Simpson, it was the style at the time.

Speaking of the style of the time, another thing the article does is mention again and again AD&D's official stance on the use of poison by player characters who are not members of the assassin class. Even though Dragon depended on a huge number of rules variants for its monthly content, the editorial policy at the time was to remind readers that nothing within its pages was official unless it came from the pen of Gary Gygax or someone to whom he had given his imprimatur. Landsea clearly knew this, which might explain why he seems at pains to emphasize his fidelity to AD&D whenever possible. This has no impact on the quality of the article itself; it's simply a peculiar artifact from another era.