Dragon (Issue 78 - Oct 1983)

Vol. VIII No. 4 of Dragon Magazine.

Cover Art by Dennis Beauvais.

This issue featured Citadel by the Sea - Contest winning AD&D module and MIND GAMES - A set of articles on psionics in the AD&D world.
It also listed the "Gamers' Guide", which was an index of all the advertising in the issue.

From the editor-in-chief's description of the issue:

Selecting articles for publication has something in common with the use of psionics: in both cases, first impressions are usually accurate. A mind reader, I'm not. But when I first laid eyes on the pages upon pages of manuscript that Arthur Collins sent us on psionics in the AD&D game, I had the impression it was all going to end up inside this magazine.

We looked at a lot of submissions on psionics after putting out the word a few months ago that we were planning a special section on the topic. In the end, we accepted Arthur's material, stirred in a few other manuscripts, and put them together in a super-sized section called "Mind Games."

Arthur contributed the opening piece, an overview of the subject with some suggestions for shoring up the rules structure. He follows with an original creation, the Psionicist character class. Then, thanks to Arthur's efforts and the kindness of author Katharine Kurtz, we offer an adaptation for the AD&D game of the Deryni race and some of the more famous personages from the novels of the Deryni written by Ms. Kurtz.

Woven in and around those articles are four other psionics features: A "Sage Advice" column; a short article by Robert Schroeck on solving some problems in play; a glimpse at "The ecology of the mind flayer"; and a piece of writing by yours truly (revised and expanded since its first publication in issue #13 of the POLYHEDRON Newszine) on the resemblances between magic spells and psionic powers.

This issue's cover painting has nothing to do with psionics, except that it probably blew your mind when you saw it. The artist is Denis Beauvais, the title of the painting is "Motherhood," and we hope to print more of Denis' work in the months to come.

The next in our series of contest-winning modules, "Citadel by the Sea," occupies the center 16 pages of this magazine. It's "only" an adventure for low-level AD&D characters - but at the same time, there's a lot more to it than those characters might think.

Mathematics and physics have a lot to do with two of our other features. In an article that's a statistician's dream, author David Weeks explains how to use the chi-square test to see if those tried-and-true dice of yours really are true. After all that mental exercise, you'll need something physical, and you can't get more physical than a car chase - or a car crash. Ed R. Teixeira is the author of an article that describes rules for moderating car chases and their after-effects in the TOP SECRET game. Now, can someone tell me if a tower of iron will is any good against a '76 Chrysler? - KM