Dragon Magazine #133

I've been rummaging through boxes again, as I supposedly clear out the spare room, and come across yet another Role Playing Game (RPG) magazine from my youth.  I really have no idea how or why these old magazines have somehow survived the years and house moves, only to end up forgotten in a box in my spare room, but I keep coming across them.  Anyway, this is Dragon Magazine 133, from May 1988.  I have absolutely no recollection of buying this magazine and it seems that I didn't buy any others.  Judging by its near pristine condition, I couldn't have thumbed through it much after my first reading.  Like White Dwarf, which was owned by Games Workshop, Dragon was effectively a 'house' magazine, being owned and published by TSR, publishers of Dungeons and Dragons.  Consequently, it has a strong bias toward TSR products, (possibly the reason why I didn't buy it again, as I wasn't really into any of their RPGs).  

It has to be said that it is a very slickly produced publication and certainly doesn't skimp on the content - this issue weighs in at over a hundred pages.  The content is pretty much what you'd expect, covering various aspects of, mainly, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons such as additional rules, scenarios and the like. There are also all the usual regular features, including reviews and a three page fantasy comic strip.  One particularly interesting article explores the role of computers in RPGs and stands as a reminder of just how crude computer games were back in the late eighties.  Computer RPGs back then were mainly text based and involved lots of typing.  Looking through this edition of Dragon, my main criticism would be that it seems a bit, well, staid.  The 'fun' factor seems to largely absent.  Which, I think, is why I favoured White Dwarf (before become devoted entirely to Warhammer) - it just felt like it wasn't taking itself too seriously and was consequently far more enjoyable.  Moreover, despite being a 'house' publication, it seemed to cover a wider range of products than the Dungeons and Dragons focused Dragon.