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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 14, 2013 7:12:03 GMT -5
It's weird how the original conception was 'land dragon' and not 'earth worm' in the slightest. And also that it was seemingly a monster of Middle Earth? The Isles of Umbar being near the Haven of Umbar, south of Gondor?
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 14, 2013 9:48:32 GMT -5
Its weird that you mention "LANDDRAGONS", back in 1981 or so I was so pissed about the "crawling dragon" of the ACTION ART set not fitting in "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" to my knowledge until the DRAGON #74 (JUN 1983) article LANDDRAGONS: WINGLESS WONDERS OF A FARAWAY LAND by Ronald Hall. This gave me the Arack Dragon a wingless blue dragon with a gas breath weapon to "officially" go by ( the other two wingless dragons were "Scintillating Dragon" which was rainbow colored with camouflaged beam breath and the "Night Dragon" which was black with grey streaks with bright beam breath.) Well placing the Arack stats on that miniature didn't sit very well because dragging out the DRAGON article and the way it was written, elaboration of the breath weapon and attacks to make them different, started to rub me the wrong way. I can clearly say that this article was probably the first one to give me "D&D agita"...just kidding, seriously, this was the first article to give me a sense that DRAGON wasn't in synch with the AD&D books. If I had only known that I could have painted him purple... |
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Post by GRWelsh on Jul 15, 2013 10:06:38 GMT -5
I was very confused back in 1981. I had a hard time understanding the differences between Basic and Advanced D&D. Dragon Magazine had little or no support for the former, it was almost all for the latter. My vision of the "D&D world" was a vague mish mash of Middle Earth, Narnia, Greek and Norse mythology and the legends of King Arthur -- the fantasy I was familiar with. I thought if TSR produced it, and if it appeared in a Monster section or the Monster Manual, it had to have some place in the D&D world. It took me a little while also to see that not everyone producing material for TSR and THE DRAGON was on the same page.
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Post by geneweigel on Jul 15, 2013 13:15:42 GMT -5
The thing is that it must have been tough for DRAGON getting everything up to the official fitting that was described for ADVANCED i.e. being a new standard and all that, etc.. The most memorable articles outside the Gygax official stuff was the "ECOLOGY OF THE..." etc. and that was the farthest thing from compatible even though they presented it as an insider's look (they were actually from a fan quality British fanzine and ripped whole cloth for the DRAGON, for the first few that is, until they got their in-house typewriter monkeys Ed Greenwood and Roger E. Moore to take them over.). I don't believe Gygax ever felt the need to chime in like he did with GIANTS IN THE EARTH with the ecologies because it was just off the mark for him totally in comparison to Schick and Moldvay trampling over beloved story characters. I think his reluctance inadvertantly gave it more credence than it was worth. I think perhaps that GYGAX MAGAZINE's ecologies will probably be of equal value because the originals were never insightful towards why they were statted this way or that way as they should have been anyway. I recall trying to adhere, integrate and ultimately "stat-grok" stuff from these type articles and ultimately putting it off to another year and finally just ignoring their pretentious aura of "how its made", etc.. and relegating them to totally ignoring them for game purposes.
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