The Articles of Dragon: "It's That Time of Year Again ..."

I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to longtime readers of this blog that, as a young man, I was fairly serious and earnest. Shocking, I know! Of all the things about which I was serious – and there were many – Dungeons & Dragons was near the top of the list. It's no exaggeration to say that, in the first few years after I discovered the game, D&D was an important part not merely of my life but also of my self-conception. I was a D&D player and I was sincerely proud of this fact in a way that I doubt I've ever been since.

Consequently, when I first came across issue #60 of Dragon (April 1982) and read its contents, I was taken aback. Sure, the article contained a further installment of Roger E. Moore's magisterial demihuman "Point of View" series (focusing on elves this time), along with more cantrips from Gary Gygax and other interesting stuff, but what really caught my eye were a pair of articles that played off longstanding Dragon columns, specifically "Giants in the Earth" and "Dragon's Bestiary." I say "played off," because neither installment in this issue was quite right, as I'll explain.

"Giants in the Earth" was replaced by "Midgets in the Earth" and, rather than presenting D&D stats for characters from classic fantasy and science fiction literature, what we got instead were write-ups for goofy original characters, like the kobold dictator Idi "Little Daddy" Snitmin, Morc the Orc, and master halfling thief Eubeen Hadd. Written by Roger E. Moore and accompanied by artwork that looks like it could have been drawn by Jim Holloway, "Midgets in the Earth" was clearly intended as nothing more than silly fun in honor of April Fool's Day. Please bear in mind that I read this article long before I'd come across the regular April Fool's issues of Polyhedron, so the concept was still somewhat new to me at the time.

The issue's "Dragon's Bestiary" was in a similar vein. Instead of the usual assortment of dangerous and unusual new monsters for use with D&D, we were given entries inspired by various pop culture "monsters," like Donald Duck or Marvin the Martian or the Bad News Bugbears. Like "Midgets in the Earth," these were clearly intended to be silly, but I found them irritating – all the more so because they were written by designers like Tom Moldvay and David Cook, who could have been writing really useful stuff. Why were they wasting effort on such nonsense, I thought? I'd much rather have had more serious content that I could drop into my ongoing AD&D campaign.

Yeah, I was a little tightly wound in those days. Go figure! In time, I came to be a bit more accepting of such silliness, but it took some time – and more April Fool's issues of Dragon to do it. I never fully embraced it, but I did become less uptight about it and the way I enjoyed my hobby. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself ...

They're Multiplying ...!

The discussion surrounding the depiction of gnolls in TSR era Dungeons & Dragons has been quite lively, both in the comments and in emails sent to me privately. Another commenter pointed me toward an even more obscure gnoll illustration.

This full-page piece originally appeared in 1981's The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and is by Stephen D. Sullivan. There are two gnolls depicted above, both in the center of the illustration. The first is standing upright, grappling with a sword-wielding fighter. The other is on the ground, biting at the fighter's leg. It's an odd thing to depict, since I don't recall gnoll's having a bite attack in any TSR edition of D&D, but, if I am mistaken about this, I am certain one of you will correct me. 

In any case, Sullivan's gnolls teeter on the line between looking properly hyena-like and more canine/lupine. Personally, I prefer it when monsters are their own thing, not just real-world animals with a few bits added or subtracted, so I don't want gnolls to look exactly like hyenas. At the same time, I also don't want them to be dog or wolf-men either (though, interestingly, The Keep on the Borderlands) does, on its rumor table, describe them as "big dog-men," so what do I know?