Kim Mohan, RIP

I wanted to note (somewhat belatedly) the passing of Kim Mohan.

Among many other things, Mohan was the editor of Dragon during its peak: issues 49 through 114. The “Mohan era” was the true “golden age” of Dragon in my view. (Mohan later became editor again for issues 199-217, but I’m not familiar at all with that period of the publication.)

I started buying Dragon regularly (almost every month) with issue 56. It had a great impact on my early involvement in the hobby. I looked forward to every issue. This was long before the internet age, so Dragon was the main window into the greater “RPG scene” and community. (I also read White Dwarf regularly during this time, which provided some insight into the UK scene. I can’t imagine those years of my life without both publications.)

I stopped reading Dragon around the time that Mohan departed. Not that I paid any attention to such things at the time; rather, by the mid-1980s my RPG focus had shifted to MERP, Call of the Cthulhu, and other non-D&D/AD&D games.

Mohan had an impressively long career in the RPG business: he’s listed as a contributor to the 5th edition D&D Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual.

RIP

Giants in the Earth and the pre-TSR Known World

Some interesting notes from the original “Known World” Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting have been made available for all to enjoy. (See this thread at the Piazza forum or find the PDFs here.)

 

These notes are from a shared campaign developed and run by Tom Moldvay and Lawrence Schick when they were college students in the late 1970s. Both Schick and Moldvay went on to become employees at TSR for a few years. These notes clearly were developed into the “Known World” setting originally described in the module X1: Isle of Dread (and used by subsequent modules in the “Basic” and “Expert” D&D lines—eventually becoming, well after the departure of Moldvay and Schick from TSR, Mystara).

 

I've only skimmed the notes. Based on that skim, of most interest to me are the write-ups for fictional characters: Cugel the Clever, Kane, Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and the like. These would later appear in Dragon magazine’s feature: “Giants in the Earth: Classic Heroes From Fiction & Literature.”

As a great Jack Vance fan, I love the work they put into their write-up of the Dying Earth wizard Iucounu. Here’s the version that was published in Dragon issue 29:

 

I’m not a member of the Piazza but it looks like an interesting place. Perhaps I’ll join…