Dragon Magazine 171, July 1991. Oh man, this issue. This was the second issue I got with my subscription back in the day and my lord, what a treasure.

First off, always loved the water weird cover. I love water weirds. I am not sure why there is a water weird in this chest, but whatever, Donald Clavette does it justice.

Lots of other good stuff packed in here. Michael Stackpole delivers an excellent rebuttal to Carl Raschke’s book Painted Black (1990), which sought to keep the Satanic Panic going. The Decanter of Endless Water gets a thorough look. The Eye of the Beholder videogame from SSI gets a review. There are samples of the AD&D trading cards (I posted about them a couple weeks back).

Most of all, there is the article “101 Surprises in a Bag of Beans,” an expanded table of effects for use with the Bag of Beans magic item. This has been a mainstay of my campaigns, derailing many of them, since, well, July of 1991. I love this list so much. The Deck of Many Things has nothing on the Bag of Beans. Goddamn. So good.