Dragon Issue 95: March 1985

part 1/2

100 pages. Welcome to the D&D experience, blue-jeans style. Certainly an interesting art style for this months cover. I quite approve. No particular theme to this month's issue, just another array of stuff for your enjoyment, for all kinds of systems. Can't think of anything else interesting to say here, so lets get going, as usual.

In this issue:

Letters: We have a letter complaining about how much advertising has increased in  the magazine over the years. With statistics. They consider this so significant that they devote the whole editorial to justifying it. Commerce sucks, does it not. Just the price we pay to not have to charge you so much.
One of those awkward questions. If someone is deconverted after a cleric converts them, do they lose XP. The answer is generally no. They take the time to answer some more possible rules quibbles. So it goes.
A dumb question about an apparent rules error that is not a mistake at all. Use a little logic before you write in, it'll save everyone a lot of trouble.
Some questions about the monsters in issue 89. Once again logic and realism have to take a hike. Seems like they're saying that a lot lately. Every trend has it's backlash.
Another question on a recent article. Now they want to know exactly what counts as mental damage. Simple enough to resolve.
As is the next bit, which isn't a letter but a load of errata. All in all, this letters section has been rather a downer. Can't we have at least one feelgood compliment or amusingly insane rant? Poor Kim, having to sift through this crap every month.

The forum: Stephen Inniss rebuts comments on his recent articles. You, sirs, were not paying attention, for I specifically already addressed the problems you mentioned within the article. Fantasy is not real, but you should still try and keep it internally consistent. Not that you have to explain everything upfront, either. Balance, my dears.
Calvin V Jestice wants to introduce chances for broken bones to falling damage. Once again, we see people wanting to put specific injuries into an abstract hit point system. Shoo, Away wi ye, ya varmints.
Leslie G Gillis thinks that the idea of worshipping only one god in a pantheistic society is a silly one. Most people will appeal to appropriate gods whenever they're in a tough situation.  A perfectly valid view. Monotheistic assumptions from the real world can be hard to shake of. Also, why should PC's be completely immune to systems that affect NPC's. They shouldn't be that special.

From the sorceror's scroll: After receiving many complaints, Gary decides to loosen up the demihuman racial limits a little, as well as open up the various subraces to general PC's. Welcome to serious power creep. We also see the first named mention of Unearthed Arcana. Having produced so many Official AD&Dtm Rules Additions in this magazine, it's time to compile them and make them easily accessable, like they've been saying they would since 1982. Yeah, that's the ticket And then next year, they'll start work on a new edition. This is interesting information. And that's not all, not by a long shot, no sir. We also have more news on the D&D film, and results from the recent survey. And finally, Gary apologizes once again to the runners of Origins, as bad blood between conventions is not helpful to the hobby as a whole. My oh my. That's some quite substantial news. This will please a lot of people, and piss off almost as many. The D&D ruleset is  about to be changed forever, not neccecarily for the better. Looks like the next few issues are going to be rather dramatic ones. Should be exciting for me.

The influence of tolkien on D&D: More pontification from Gary. Once again, for those of you who didn't get the memo way back in issue 13, he talks about D&D's many other influences such as Howard, Vance, Moorcock, Lieber, et all. While D&D's races may have been taken from LotR, the tone was very much not. In fact, he's quite critical in many ways of Tolkien's writing style and plot pacing. D&D is not suited to running a game like Tolkien's plots, and you really shouldn't try. Seven years may have passed, and many things have changed in the meantime, but his opinion remains much the same. All you Johnny-come-latelys who've never read most of the original inspirations for the game are Doing It Wrong™. Once again we see how he's already the ultimate grognard, pontificating on subjects most people already consider irrelevant, and only grudgingly changing with the times. Still, once again, he does so in an entertaining fashion. It's going to be different once he's gone. Who's going to play the cantankerous ideologue then?

The world gamers guide: Looks like this is back, sorta. They're no longer going to publish the name of everyone who sends it in, because that'd take forever. Instead, they're going to concentrate on expanding international awareness. If you're in some far flung part of the world, and struggling to find any players at all, they'll help out. How nice of them.

Christians! Learn how to fight at the gates of hell with Dragonraider! Well, okay then. I'm sure your parents will object less than if you were playing that ghastly piece of satanic propaganda that is D&D I find this advert amusing on multiple levels.

How taxes take their toll: Taxes. Peh. Was there ever a thing adventurers hated more? Arthur Collins regales us with tales of the things kingdoms find to take money from you for having, and the way they do it with the least resistance. Catch them in the winter, when they can't run away. An annoying subject, but handled with humour and a good framing device. Will your adventurers aquiesce for the good of the kingdom, or will they slaughter anyone who has the temerity to try and leave or take over. And if they take over, how will they handle the whole finance situation. You might be able to live the high life on a dragons hoard for years, but it won't keep the roads smooth or the army paid for long. A dull subject, but still one you can build plenty of adventures around. Do you want those kinds of realistic ramifications in your game, or would you prefer to keep your play escapist? As ever, any amusing stories of how your characters acted when faced with the dread spectre of taxes are welcome.

The ecology of the cockatrice: Ed ropes Elminster in to help for the second issue in a row. He must be running out of time to do his own research, with all this rapid writing. We get one of his best stories yet, a nicely folklorish tale of ironic punishment featuring the red wizards of Thay and several now familiar bits of Realms geography. Once again we get plenty of detail on both their lifecycle and the uses to which their parts can be put (and the prices you can command for those parts. You want to make magic items of petrification, here's the thing you want to go for. Once again, he continues to outdo himself, with strong fiction, worldbuilding, ecology, and game-usefullness all handled in an exemplary manner. And he's got a decent balance between text and footnotes as well. Unless you don't like him putting Realms setting stuff in a supposedly generic article, this is practically the platonic ideal of an ecology article. Genius.

Prices for the roaring 20's: Hello Glenn. It's a while since we had some stuff from you. Once again he's put lots of effort into his research and writing to show us just how ridiculous inflation has been over the years. Cars for $200. Shoes for a couple of pounds. A cement mixer for $26, of all things. One of those system-free articles that'll come in handy if you find yourself in the appropriate position. He's got a good idea of what adventurers are likely to want. If your PC's want to go into the lair of the monster dressed in gingham, their desires are catered for. Another one for  bookmarking.

Credit where credit is due: Katharine Kerr once again shows her distaste for hack and slash gaming and tries to get some more people to abandon it for the rarified realms of Proper Roleplaying™. This of course is tricky when the principle source of XP is killing things and taking their stuff. To change people's behaviour, you need to alter what the system rewards and punishes. Clever thought, and one which will be applied to great effect in future games. Once again, her attention to detail is exemplary, but she also shows a certain didactic over-literalism in her writing. I sense that she is growing dissatisfied with this job. She certainly isn't producing as smoothly and reliably as Ed, Ken or Roger.

The many shapes of apes: Stephen Innis continues to be a prolific contributer. At this rate he'll be next to officially join the team. He returns to one of his subjects of expertise, animals. From little chimpanzees to the extinct (on earth) Gigantopithicus, (which really ought to be renamed for a fantasy campaign.) plus gorillas and orangutans. Compared to the recent stuff in the creature catalog, they're a bit dull really. So much for reality being stranger than fiction. Shoulda put bonobos in there as well. Bah. Family friendly magazine and all that crap. Not the most fun way this could have been handled.

dragonraid is not, in itself, a bad game. Sure, the magic system requires PLAYERS to quote scripture... but other than that... It's very much CS Lewis in inspiration.

(Yes, I've got the big green box.)

Dragon Issue 95: March 1985

part 2/2

Into the forgotten realms: Well well. Having been regailed with hints about it for the past four years, we finally get to play an official FR module this month. With UA as well, this is turning out to be a significant month. This is one of those modules you're not intended to solve by straight combat, with a boss way above your expected CR. It's also very much a tournament module, with a scoring system and definite winners and losers. Looks like despite his progressive tendencies, Ed can kick it old skool with the best of them as well. Is there no end to his talents? This'll test your ingenuity and your ability to play along with ridiculous situations. Will you take the pregens, or subject your regular characters to it.

Battles above the dungeon: We've had plenty of advice on how to set an adventure above ground by now. However, tactical advice for party level skirmishes has not been amongst that advice. And lets face it, positioning can have a pretty significant effect on a fight. Surrounding, hitting from the rear, ambushing with ranged attacks, cover, there are plenty of ways you can turn the tide. Once you add flight, and the artillery effects magic can provide, you can face hugely greater numbers and come out on top. Or vice versa, if it's your enemy that's using these tricks. A lengthy article full of cool ideas to get you to raise your game, that if anything is even more relevant today, with 4th ed's emphasis on positioning and it's manipulation. You can get a lot of use out of this one, regardless of the system you're using. A pretty strong article all round.

Fiction: Desperate acts by Gordon Linzer. A very dramatic tale of aging, ambition, treachery, necromancy, and hiding the truth from both yourself and others. Has the captain of the guard been holding on to her post too long? Who wants to get her removed and why? Obviously I won't spoil you, but the answer will remain mysterious until the last page. Once again, he puts an interesting slant on familiar ideas, taking them a step further to keep them interesting.

Coming attractions: Endless Quest gets two new subdivisions. Super Endless Quest offers more depth and choice, with it's first release, the Prisoners of Pax Tharkas. Meanwhile Crimson crystal uses the same trick as the old transformers toys. Use the crimson screen on the artwork to reveal the clues to solve the problems. It's first two adventures are Riddle of the Griffon and Search for the pegasus. Anyone remember any of this stuff. Seems odd that they aren't covering it in the magazine at all.
Top secret gets TS008: The seventh seal. Save Los Angeles from nuclear destruction. The stakes are pretty high. Are your agents up to the mission?
Marvel superheroes gets MHAC5: Project wideawake. Essentially, it's the mutant splatbook. Lots of stats and stuff for your enjoyment.
Conan gets his own standalone RPG. Another one of those boxed sets that show up just how much more accessable to new players RPG's were back then. 80 pages in total was considered a game of medium complexity. Even supposedly light games like savage worlds are more than twice that nowadays. Ridiculous, really.
AD&D gets lots of cool stuff. The battlesystem game means you finally have a system for mass combat. Let your characters lead armies! Woo! We also get module C5: The bane of Llewellyn, and DL6: Dragons of ice. Both continue the adventures from previous installments. Lots to keep your heroes busy with here.

The zuraqqor strike back!: Star frontiers Knight Hawks gets some more ship stats and scenarios. Quite a familiar tale, that. Beware the insectile Zuraqqor, and their massive hive-ships. They may seem slow, but there's lots of things even slower, that they can raid and loot. Should provide a few more hours of fun for you.

Starquestions goes back to gamma world. It's becoming quite the regular stop for them as well.
Will you reprint old articles if we demand them ( Mmmmmmaybe. If you ask very nicely. )
What do you use for hit dice when attacking on matrix II (constitution)
How much damage do mini-missiles really do (10d10. Doesn't sound very mini to me.)
How do you penetrate powered armour with a club. (Lots of Clubs! The problem with ablative armour is that it ablates. )
Can you cut peoples limbs off with a vibroblade (No. Abstraction strikes again! Once they're dead, you can mutilate them any way you like. )
Do radiated eyes have a weapon class (nope. Zappy lasers are very good at hitting.)
Does having con 16+ let you attack as a 16 HD creature (quite possibly)
How many attacks can you do in a turn (1. No more. Ancillary actions may be performed as well. NPC's may break that rule.)
Where is the apocalypse base (Very good question. Keep asking and we may do a module on it.)
Can we have a list of how the new edition has changed from the old (no. You've gotta buy the new edition, so there. )
Are there prisons in gamma world (Sure. Don't expect the criterea for being put in them to be fair or sane. You get caught, you deal with the consequences of the local law, whatever it may be. )
Are there more cryptic alliances (Sure. Introduce any you want. )
I don't have an LGS. (Mail order our stuff. Aaaaanywhere iiiinnn the WOOOOORRRRRRLLLLDD!!!!!)
Is radiation damage applied immediately. (At the end of the appropriate interval. It'd be intolerably tedious to roll for background radiation every minute. )
Are there any gamma world posters (sorry.)
How much status do you get for killing things (the enemy's total hit points, divided by the number of combatants on your side. )
Should the players be allowed to look at the rules during the game. (That is entirely the GM's decision. You can be as nice, or as strict as the players will tolerate. )
When do we find out what happened to the rest of the solar system. (Again, keep begging and buying our stuff, and we may tell you ............ eventually. If you can't wait, just make it up yourself. )
Where can I find a starship. (In space. They're too big to land, and any functioning ones are already well off this dump. )
Are there gamma world articles in ARES and polyhedron issues (yes. Pick them up while they're available.)
Will we ever get Advanced Gamma world, organized like AD&D. (No.)
Who fought in the social wars (Everyone. No-one was spared. Not even Switzerland. )

Antimissiles and roundshot: Another familiar system gets more attention. Traveller gets some intriguing new weapons to tip the odds in space combat. Mines. Tractor beams. Antimissile clusters. A definite emphasis on the defensive side of your ship's arsenal. Stuff that shows up in plenty of Sci-fi movies and books, and I'm vaguely surprised isn't detailed already. Spot a gap, fill that gap, soon people can't imagine being without you, that's the way to progress, as I've said before. And this article neatly avoids the threat of power creep as well. But what would you expect from the author of something as inventive and meta-aware as Everybody eats everybody on sunday's planet. Once again, he gets my approval.

The marvel-phile: Iron man! Now there's a character who's evolved in powers quite a lot over the years. Because he has two operators, plus a whole array of special powers developed as needed over the years, this is too big to fit in a single issue, with more to come next time. To start off, we get the unenhanced stats for Tony Stark and Rhodey. Pretty much what you'd expect. Then we get the suit, and a whole page of the special powers it's had over the years. This is a definite case where you need reassignable floating power points rather than a laundry list. Some poor cut-and-pasting is visible in this article, which definitely doesn't interface that well with the usual style of these articles. Gadgeteers are a problem in many supers games, and it seems this is no exception. How awkward and disappointing.

The dolphins of known space: Larry Niven! Ringworld! It's been quite a while since we saw anything on this. But now we have an official licenced game, hopefully we'll be seeing some more in the near future.
Now, dolphins. While intelligent, they're a definite problem to integrate into standard games, cause y'know, the whole no arms or legs thing. Fortunately, Known space is a pretty racially progressive place, (We'll skip the flamewars about it's sexual progressiveness for now) and they have plenty of gadgetry to help them integrate. All of which is nicely statted up for the BRP system. And they do have some cool special abilities that make up for it, such as sonar and exceptional swimming ability. You can make this into the kind of problem that's fun to get around, rather than the type that'll ruin the game. A pleasing article, both from a fluff and crunch perspective. And since it's BRP, that means you can play dolphins in Runequest as well. Looks like Greg's request is already paying dividends.

Wormy also comments on taxes and economics. Snarfquest again triumphs by sheer luck. Dragonmirth is as puntacular as ever.

Looks like D&D's history is chugging along nicely. With UA imminent, and the forgotten realms given a considerable profile raise, we get some more foreshadowing of the big changes that will happen in the next few years. The rest of the issue's pretty interesting as well. Ed continues to shine. Katharine shows signs of burning out, there's plenty of stuff for other systems. Looks like their strong run is continuing, but there are hints that may change at any time. What will the next dramatic left turn be? Lets hope we won't have to wait too long to see.

Quote from: aramis;326125dragonraid is not, in itself, a bad game. Sure, the magic system requires PLAYERS to quote scripture... but other than that... It's very much CS Lewis in inspiration.

(Yes, I've got the big green box.)

So ironically, you're closer to performing REAL magic when you're playing it than you are in D&D

Quote from: (un)reason;326344So ironically, you're closer to performing REAL magic when you're playing it than you are in D&D

yup!

Dragon Issue 96: April 1985

part 1/2

100 pages. Welcome to another april fools issue. They may have neglected it last year, but this time they're really going to town on the ridiculousness. Pray if they slap you round the face with a fish, it'll be a haddock, not a spiny puffer fish or a giant eel or a mudkip. No-one really lieks mudkips. Not even with pasta. DUCK CITY!

In this issue:

Talisman, the magical quest game. How cute. I vaguely remember this.

Letters: A letter asking if you could cut costs by feeding your soldiers nothing but iron rations. Sure, but they wouldn't be happy about it, and they still wouldn't be able to carry enough to feed them more than a few weeks, especially with all their other stuff. You can't escape logistics that easily.
A question about the jumping rules in issue 93. Unclear math in an example? Say it aint so.
An odd question about attacking while being grappled by the eye of the deep. Of all the things to quibble about.
A letter asking how hard the Urisk is to spot. Pretty darn tricky, as long as it stays still.
Someone pointing out a pronunciation inconsistency. They say to use the dictionary version. Even writers disagree at times.
And finally, as it's april, we have four joke letters. You know, these would be funnier if they weren't immediately obvious as joke letters. You ought to use the real ones. You should know by now they'll be more ridiculous than anything you can come up with.

PENDARGON!! (squee!) Ahem, I mean dragon. One of the most idiosyncratically awesome games ever gets its first edition. Honor, Passion, romance and getting old and dying in the reign of King Arthur. Man, we're not even to the first feature and we've already seen two interesting new adverts. This is promising.

The forum: David Miller has his own thoughts on alignment, leaning towards subjectivity and being true to your own standards being more important than some universal rules of morality. A perfectly valid way to do things, but not one that will end this debate.
Joseph M Dornbierer takes up the rest of the forum, with a huge amount of commentary on all sorts of articles and the way they change the rules. What is really official if even Gary doesn't use the rules as written, what additions and streamlinings are good for the game, and does anyone actually play them as written, because I've never seen a game where every rule is strictly applied. Even if they were, many of the results would be ridiculous in real world terms. This is seriously problematic. Once again we see that many people back then had problems with the rules, and extensive house-ruling was common. What are we to do with this turbulent playerbase?

From the sorceror's scroll: More demihuman level limit increases. God, people just won't let up on this one, will they? Having already granted some pretty hefty raises, now Gary opens up various previously forbidden classes. Most significant of these is that elves can now become rangers. Their gods have finally decided that this newfangled wilderness handling skillset the humans have come up with is so appropriate to elves that they'll grant their persistent prayers and let them have it. See what determined union action gets you? Druids also get considerably opened ranks. We also get some tedious organizational stuff, as they turn paladins into a sub-class of cavalier, and elaborate on the dual classing options available to characters. We also get some amusing contrition from Gary as he receives a lecture in etiquette from a FLGS employee, and reminds us to be polite when requesting stuff they don't have. (also, don't steal kids, as if you needed to be told) And in another of his random left turns, he recommends the Black Company books by Glen Cook as being excellent inspiration for gaming. Another amusing demonstration of his stream of conciousness writing style, in which rules are changed at his whim. Just business as usual around here then.

Daredevils, the game of 1930's adventurers. Well well, another one. So many people trying to do pulp and flopping in the 80's. So much for that plan.

What good PC's are made of: Katharine Kerr continues to preach the cause of proper characterization with increasing stridency. Careful attention to historical detail, check. A definite preference for the gritty over high fantasy. Check. Give your character a proper background. Check. Race, nationality and religion should mean more than a single word on a sheet. She is becoming predictable. All these elements have appeared in her previous articles in various combinations. Fortunately, this is her last appearance for quite a long time. I suspect she was getting as sick of having to think of stuff to write here regularly as I am of reading it. Such a shame to see a writer flag and quit. Still, she went on to bigger and better things, so gamings loss is fictions gain. You'll have to look elsewhere if you want to see the rest of her story.

The ecology of the gulguthra: A rather fitting name, don't you think. If you or I had to eat shit, I think we'd make a noise somewhat approximating the taxonomic name of the otyugh family. This is as much a story of forgotten realms politics as it is the monster in question. Not that it neglects them, going into considerable detail on their physiology and mating habits (which are as gross as you might expect) tactics and relationships with other creatures. Ed seems to have pretty much locked down this series for the moment, with the impression given that he can knock off these in an afternoon by now. They're definitely developing in a way I'm not sure I approve of, with forgotten realms creeping into the generic stuff so much. You'll have to remember that this stuff isn't canon, and you can alter their ecologies for your own world if you choose. Don't let them hem your imagination in without even realizing it. And don't think you have to have an ancient superpowerful wizard imparting wisdom to your players at every opportunity. There are better ways to get your infodumps.

Coming attractions: A bit small this month, but with a nice scroll backdrop. Our main feature is Castle Arcania, a one-on-one adventure gamebook. Sounds interesting. Anyone remember these things?
Indiana Jones gets the Judges survival pack, and module IJ4, The Golden Goddess. Rules expansions, and an adventure directly tied into the first movie. Lets get our payback.
Marvel Superheroes gets MH6: Thunder over Jotenheim. A solo adventure for the mighty Thor. Who dares!
Endless Quest gets it's 27th book, Lair of the Lich. Recover your father's secret spells from the dread liches catacomb before they're used to cause devastation.
D&D gets X9: The savage coast. What lies to the west of the Known World? One of the most fun bits of world you'll ever explore, and one we'll revisit quite a few times in greater depth. If you finish that, you can go straight into module CM4: The earthshaker. The Known World is at threat as a great danger awakes. Head back from your domains in Norwald to defeat it. We also get Dragons of Winter Night, part two of the Dragonlance Chronicles. The heroes split up. Well, since Tolkien did it, it's virtually obligatory to have the forking subplot. Otherwise it's not properly epic.

Off the shelf gets its title back: The bishop's Heir by Katharine Kurtz gets a rather mixed review. While for any normal author this would be great, for her it's slightly subpar, with the antagonists never really developed enough. Wait for the paperback if you like her stuff.
Moonheart by Charles De Lint on the other hand, gets a truly fanboyish response. Originality, characterisation, worldbuilding, style, all get top marks from this reviewer. It spans multiple genres and is pretty cool.
Brisingamen by Diana L Paxton takes an ancient norse macguffin and places it in the hands of a student in san francisco. Can you guess what happens next? Plot! Thankfully it's an interesting and well researched plot, which manages to feel real despite the supernatural elements.
The fire sword by Adrienne Martine-Barnes causes the reviewer much frustration. Something's not quite right with it, but he can't quite pinpoint it, and so kept reading and feeling unsatisfied, like scratching at an itch making it worse. He encourages you not to start. An interesting way to condemn a novel, and not one I remember seeing before.
The vulcan academy murders by Jean Lorrah is, as should be obvious, a star trek novel. While not that great as a murder mystery, with a bit of idiot balling taking place, it's a good source of more setting details for your own star trek games, with lots of stuff on Vulcan culture. And for all the reviewers distaste for Star Trek Fiction, is what D&D is doing with it's dragonlance novels any better?

Dragon Issue 96: April 1985

part 2/2

The handy art of forgery: A new special skill for assassins? Cool, I guess. It seems like a reasonable ability for them to have, so why not. As is common in 1st edition, it's odds of success are determined by a fixed % roll with a few basic modifiers. And you don't really give anything up to gain this new power, which is still a definite issue. A good idea that is flawed by the overall level of game design technology at this point. What are you gonna do.

Books to games? Perhaps!: Yeah, stealing settings seems like a good way to save time and get lots of cool stuff. However, it has definite problems. Gary is already aware of this, and has made his feelings on doing so very clear. But it's certainly not a terrible idea. You just have to pick your setting carefully, and make sure it has enough room for stories beyond the original one. Changing things to deal with spoileriffic players, setting it far in the past or future, hybridizing the settings and themes of several different books, all help. We get conversion and plot examples for Gor (!) Barsoom, and Middle earth settings. A pretty solid article that should help you if you're considering this course of action.  

PBM update - news and views: Mike Gray is back, following up on his previous examination of the play by mail scene. Rick Loomis' attempts to regulate the hobby seem to be working, and the hobby as a whole is chugging along nicely. So he gives us reviews of 5 new games. Battle of the gods, World of velgor, Illuminati, Capitol, and Quest for the great jewels. All get crisp and fairly positive reviews that go into a decent amount of detail on their workings. Another good example of the diversity of stuff they're covering in this period, and it's interesting to see how this related field fares compared to RPG's. See you again next year, I hope.

Nogard: The ultimate high level Adventure to end all adventures! The most epic, exciting adventure ever. You will not believe how awesome this one is. April Fool.

The what's new dragon. Aww, isn't it cute. We get D&D stats for this little terror. Growf growf. We also get stats for the quazar dragon, a planet eating monstrosity for when your players have got too big for their boots. Neither are really legal, so don't worry too much. If they show up, you're screwed whatever you do. Your best hope is to amuse the DM enough that they don't utterly humiliate you with them.

The meanest of monsters: Two more spoof monsters, the Killer DM, and the sleep inducing DM. Once again, be very afraid, because there's no way you can win a fight with these guys. Soft Barbara Streissand music, booga booga booga. What worse fate could you face. There's no Robert Smith to save you this time. Also notable for introducing the scariest critical damage system evar. April fool.

It takes all kinds: Enraged Glaciers and Ghouls finally gets round to publishing race descriptions. Humans, Kobolds, Fairies, Goblins, Biters and Bogies. None are exactly what you would expect, as they put a unique spin on each race. An extensive matrix describes their relationships with one-another, but they have no actual stats. Maybe next year. April fool.

Rules to lose by: Ever wondered what the most underpowered class ever was. Look no further. Welcome to the hopeless character class. Even regular commoners could kick this guys ass, if he didn't kick it for them by accident first. Technically legal, but you'd have to be mad to play one. A hundred, of them, naruto style, on the other hand, could be fun. April Fool. As with everything else, you'll have to make of it what you will.

Getting in over your head: Dragonquest gets another article, this time devoted to underwater adventures. A new character class devoted to them is introduced, which will certainly change the playstyle a bit. Some rather complex crunch is introduced, with detailed examination of visibility, buoyancy, and fatigue while swimming. Curious. Not really sure what to make of this, or how it integrates with the existing rules. In any case, the writer certainly seems to have different priorities when handling swimming than most game writers. Goes to show what different people see when tackling a problem.

Palladium compresses little adverts for every book so far into one page.

Fiction: Inglafs dream by Ama Darr Rogan. Meta once again creeps into our fiction as characters start to become aware of their nonexistance. Only this time they don't get to do anything about it. Which makes this rather less interesting than several of our previous contributions. Ho hum. No cool new twist on the familiar idea this time.  Maybe next time. It's not as if it's an uncommon occurance around here.

These are the voyages of the Ginny's delight: This month's special feature belongs to the ARES section. The Ginny's delight is a tramp trader, nominally set in the star trek universe, but easily adaptable to other space games. With full stats and deck plans, this is a nice help for anyone who wants to run a game with a firefly-esque independent group of PC's traveling the universe and getting in and out of wacky hijinks. Once again, they know what'll be useful, and give it to us without bogging down in unneccecary detail.

Why is this mutant smiling?: Because Gamma world gets a whole load of new mutations. More cool powers for him, in other words. 32 of them. Of course, in fine old skool tradition, you don't get to choose them, just roll them randomly, which makes the more egregious combinations unlikely, but utterly unbalanced when they do show up. Hey ho. Another so-so list of things to steal and convert for whatever game. If you saw the random demon construction and other lists, you've probably seen most of these before. Kudos for the camel hump though. A useful trick that usually gets forgotten there.

Not quite the marvel-phile: Howard the duck! Frog-man! Mailman! More awesome characters from the marvel universe get to strut their stuff on the gaming stage! April fool. An entirely legal and properly derived from the source material (which lets face it, has enough gonzo elements to keep them going for years) april fool, but an april fool nonetheless. Still, if you want to use them in your games, you can, with their blessing. I approve. These kind of things shouldn't just be swept under the rug, and april fools articles ought to be game useful. You can have mad and comical elements to your game, and not detract from the overall drama of the situation, as D&D, runequest and exalted have all demonstrated time and time again. The most risible people are those who take themselves seriously all the time.

The real marvel-phile continues it's talk about iron man, with three of the alternate suits statted up this time. Tony's lite suit, plus the space and stealth suits. The laundry list problem that plagued last issue is less of an issue (fnar), as the crunch is divided up between the various suits. We also get a very good synopsis of how Tony and co have fared over the years, with drink and financial problems playing a big part. His continuity certainly hasn't been static, and it looks like more changes are about to take places soon, as they keep up with soon to be released comics. Will we have to see him again in a few years to incorporate all the updates? We shall see.

The coming of the S'sessu: Zeb Cook gives us a new race for Star Frontiers. The S'sessu, amoral worm creatures that seem suspiciously similar to the Sathar. Don't trust them further than you can kick their asses, because they'll betray you as soon as a better offer comes along. Not a terrible addition to the stable of species, as it puts an interesting slant on the aliens as humans in funny suits trope by having two similar but apparently unconnected nonhumanoid races in the same game. I find myself approving more than I expected I would. Hey ho.

Wormy has no words this month, but some bloody impressive visuals. Trampier has certainly developed his skills quite a bit since he started working on this. Snarf breaks his poor little robot companions mind as he defeats the duck-dragon. My sanity would be squeaking too in his position.

Paranoia and MERP ads once again occupy the backmost pages.

Lots of fun stuff in this issue. Their comic output has been well above average this year, both in amusingness and game usefulness. The regular stuff, on the other hand has been pretty average, with some good stuff, and some bad stuff. So overall, a pretty decent issue. Will we see flamewars as a result of the jokes? Will next year be more or less zany? Only one way to find out. To the Causality violator! Crank dat supersoaker, Dr Netchurch! We're gonna wind 'em up fo sho!

Dragon Issue 97: May 1985

part 1/2

100 pages. Silver dragons are such sluts. Seems like they'll mate with anything with a halfway decent personality or artistic skills, regardless of species. What's all that about then. When the cosmic entities who set the standards for good and evil said that love overcoming all boundaries, differences and difficulties was a great example of good behaviour, did they really mean that principle to be applied like this? Probably not, but it makes for entertaining stories, so I'm certainly not complaining. What other stories will be inspired by the contents of this issue? Good question. Too much rambling preamble keeps solid facts intangible.

In this issue:

Letters: Kim gets the first "letter" in, an apology for messing up the demihuman level raises article. That's gonna annoy a lot of overeager players. Unearthed arcana'd better be edited better than this.
A letter from Arthur Collins' mum complaining about a mistake in one of his recent articles. Kim says that that mistake was his fault, not ours. (although we really should have spotted it and fixed it. ) But really, your mum writing in to complain? What are you, 6? How amusingly absurd. Haven't seen that around here before.
Some more errors, this time in the forgotten realms adventure. This one is their fault. They meddled with ed's perfect work, and then failed to take the proper interconnectedness of things into account! Fools!
A letter asking how far a cockatrices stoning power spreads. One discrete unit, called a lifeform.  Simple as that. Bloody rules lawyers, trying to make simple solutions complicated.
A question on ability score limits and magic items. Once again, they phrased things poorly. When they said maximum scores, they meant permanent ratings, not further temporary enhancements on top of that.
Three letters on the Treasure Trove, asking for more detail on various items.
A letter asking why apes have a such low chance of being found in their lair. Because normally they don't keep lairs, ya dummy. Does the word nomadic mean anything to you?
A letter full of rapidfire questions, which get equally terse replies. Someone's getting in the april fools spirit.

The forum: J R (R ) Smith disagrees strongly with Gary's statement that Tolkien's world is not suited to D&D gaming, and D&D is not substantially indebted to it. Apparently lots of other people agree with him, in even more heated terms that are not publishable in a family friendly magazine. How very amusing. Goes to show what happens when you talk down to your audience.  
David Finlayson thinks debating about good and evil is pointless, yet still has extensive contributions on the debate. That's like saying I don't mean to cause offense just before saying something incredibly rude. Rather disingenous really.
David C Rathbun has some optional rules about handedness, of all things. The kind of thing that feels like it ought to have been an article but wasn't long enough. Once again, experience gained from the SCA is cited. Not sure if I approve of that or not, but it's definitely interesting.

From the sorceror's scroll: This month, Gary goes into how deities get their power. Worship! Seems a sensible start. However, it then gets rather awkward, applying linear math to what should be an exponential progression, and reminding us that D&D alignment was bloody weird, goes all the way up, and wasn't all that well thought out. I'm really very iffy on this one. It reads like something that was dashed off late at night, and then published without proper editing. You need to join the dots up, otherwise the world won't work properly.

Sticks, stones, and bones: Did a thief steal your stuff. A rust monster eat it. Or a fireball backfire and melt your weapons. You'll need to improvise something fast if you want to get out of the dungeon alive. Fortunately, there are plenty of objects that make good improvised weapons, particularly if you've just killed something. Yes, it's demeaning when you're used to shiny magical swords, but a heroes true worth is in his spirit and ingenuity, not material things. Stephen Inniss delivers another of his great examinations of an aspect of the game you may have overlooked. From basic household objects, to industrial devices, so many things can be turned to the task of delivering Pain! Another thing that can be great fun, but has since fallen out of favour amongst the official designers, due to the emphasis on balance and having an expected array of equipment to go with your level. Household objects? We can't be bothered to put costs and descriptions for those anymore. Another article that makes it clear we're still a long way from home. But that doesn't mean we can't use this stuff in our games. If you power down the PC's a bit by removing their stuff, it makes battles genuinely nerve-wracking, and slows down the rush through the upper levels that you can see in 3rd and 4th. Just don't do it all the time.

A tale of three talents: Some rather impressive pictures of a miniature castle. Designed by Arthur Collins, built out of sheet metal by Dennis Kauth, and photographed by Mike Sitkiewicz, this is a pretty cool bit of design, well displayed. See what having a proper photographer on the team can do. Keep it up.

Crom's Blood! It's Conan the roleplaying game! Out now! Supplements coming soon! Adverts are amusing. Definitely a step up from getting D&D supplements.

Only train when you gain: Ahh, one of our perrenial topics. How do you handle training in the game. Should it be easy or hard. Expensive or not. How possible is it to innovate and develop in the field without help from anyone else. Let's see what this writer has to say about it. He definitely doesn't seem happy about the current assumptions. Unless you're pretty generous with your treasure, you may well wind up wasting a load of time grinding to get the money to advance after you have the XP. This doesn't seem right. Instead, lets save the training for when you actually gain new powers, rather than just improving the current ones. Seems a bit of a long-winded way to say it, but it's a sensible thing to say. Bit meh, really.

The ecology of the gorgon: Another petrifying monster gets special attention. Well, would you ignore it if it was wandering around your neighbourhood? As ever, Elminster draws upon his huge network of sources to present the information to Ed. As with the cockatrice, he decides to make their petrification a voluntary action. (which I vaguely disapprove of as it makes it entirely a combat power, and removes the inherent tragedy that the other route provides for. ) That sylistic disagreement aside, it's as well written and thought out as ever. Particularly amusing is the gorgons relationship with rust monsters, who will eat their skin (gross) given half the chance. And isn't fun stuff like that what ecology is about. Not just what a creature does, but it's relationship to other creatures. Once again, he's turning in pretty sterling work.

For a fuller background: Paul Crabaugh again contributes this month's dragonquest article. Some random rolls produce stupid results. This needs fixing. Lets revise the social class tables, and add a new variable. Nothing wrong with that, and the way it's written is laced with dry humour. A little fun makes an efficient article go down even more smoothly. As long as you don't mind some characters starting out with definite advantages compared to others from random rolls, you should enjoy this.

Pages from the mages IV: God, Elminster appearances really are increasing in frequency of late. I guess Ed's realized that quite a few people like him, and is starting to play to the crowd. Before long, his antics'll be overshadowing the game information that he imparts. We're also seeing the same place names turn up repeatedly on a regular basis now, as he develops the Realms in his own mind as well as ours. This installment's pages are Bowengles book, The spellbook of Daimos, The book of Num the mad, and Briels book of shadows. Between them, we have nine new spells, plus a recepie for making homunculi, and his usual array of amusing histories, offhand comments about people and places, and other things that can provide enough plot hooks for months of gaming. It may not all tie together, but that's the nature of a real world. There's bits all over the place, some of which connect, some of which don't, many of which seem to make no sense. You can't tie it all up into a neat package aimed purely at gamability without losing something.

Dragon Issue 97: May 1985

part 2/2

The only good captive: Oh, now this is a topic rich in ideas, that D&D really doesn't support at all. Lew Pulsipher floats the idea of keeping captives more, instead of just killing your enemies. It often allows you to get more financial benefits than just killing them and taking their stuff, allows PC's to lose without spoiling the game as much, and opens up tons of interesting roleplaying possibilities. You could be stripped of your stuff and sold into slavery (hey, a chance to use the earlier article on improvised weapons), held for ritual sacrifice, tortured, and forced to spend time with people you wouldn't normally give the time of day to. All cool stuff, that even Lew's advice probably can't make work against the rules of the game, and built up player expectations. Maybe we should consider moving to another one for a while, enjoy the change.

Blueprint for a big game: Jim Dutton, the head of the new AD&D PbM game, talks about the creation of the structure for it. This is the kind of thing that causes substantial logistical hassles. You have to structure your world building in a very different way to tabletop, and build up a lot more before you start, because winging it when you have hundreds of parties wandering around a continent is a recepie for disaster. While this gives you lots of advice in how to build your own game in an organized fashion, it doesn't actually reveal that much about the setting of the PbM game (spoilers, blah blah), and the way it's written is rather dull. Someone is rather better at technical writing than fun fluff details. Anyway, did anyone play this back in the day? What was it like? Just how much did they have to change the rules to make the week-long turn cycles work.

Reviews: Element masters is a rather curious sounding RPG. Each character is the chosen of one of the four elements, and must master element magic if they are to save the world. Looks like a rather crunchy game, with a long skill list, hit location system where each body part tracks damage separately, lots of weird monsters and implied setting detail, and good examples of play. As long as you don't object to the focussed premise and high crunch level, this looks like quite a good game which can support a decent length campaign.
Starstone is a generic RPG module. As with other system free modules around this time, it has to make up for it's lack of crunch by having stronger characterization setting and relationship details than similar D&D modules. It's main flaws are in making the plot solid enough that the PC's want to stick around to solve it, and it refers to an as yet unwritten other module, which everyone knows is an irritating sales ploy. Despite these, the reviewer still recommends it.  
Bandit gangs and Caravans is the 10th thieves guild supplement. It gets a rather less enthusiastic review. The law of diminishing returns has set in, and the combination of copypasta, and reduced size compared to previous books is making the reviewer irritable. Which is a shame, because there is some salvagable stuff in there, such as the mass combat system. Judges Guild needs to shake up their format to freshen things up again.

Authentic agencies, part I: Merle fills us in on the real life secret agencies. CIA, NSA, FBI, ATS, and the rest of the alphabet soup, with a strong emphasis on american agencies. Man, there really are a lot of them, probably all working at cross-purposes, and not sharing information properly. You could build a lot of intrigue out of these lot, even without inventing more fictional agencies. Obviously, there isn't a huge amount of data, because they're, y'know, secret agencies. But it's certainly a start. And I'm sure you could look up some more. This raises the case for playing historical spy games, as you can get the declassified stuff from 30 years ago, and find out what was really going on. So the article may be dry, but it's inspired some cool ideas in my head, which makes it ok.

Fiction: Catacomb by Henry Melton. A rather meta tale of adventuring within a MMORPG text adventure game. (very interesting in itself from a historical perspective. How common was computer networking back then? ) And they already have gold farmers. How prophetic. The anachronism of it being text based aside, this really does feel like it could have been set today. The human drama side of the writing is pretty solid too. It's not quite a full-on classic, but I'm really rather impressed by this. Sometimes, they manage to get things spot-on. Have some kudos, if you're still around.

The ares section finally gets a colour cover. Guess they've proved themselves a valuable part of the team over the past year, so a little extra money is in order. Cool. Hopefully that means they're not doomed anytime soon.

Rogues of the galaxy: Ahh, traveller. Seems to be custom designed to allow for lots of expansion material. This time, it's the career criminal that gets an expanded lifepath especially for them. This is definitely a path many adventurers will want to follow. You can make lots of money, meet fascinating people, learn cool things, and visit exotic locations. But there are risks. You may find yourself mouldering in jail for several years, not actually learning very much. Them's the breaks. Thankfully, it'll still only take a few minutes to make another one. Welcome to the team. You'll make a valuable traveling companion as long as you don't start using your larcenous skills on the rest of the party.

Starquestions: Do you need skills to use a weapon. (Do you want to have a horrible accident? I suggest you learn.)
Shouldn't automatic rifles shoot more bullets than pistols ( it's not size, it's how you use it. )
Can you use a bullet belt on an automatic rifle. (only with expensive jury-rigging)
Do dralisite suffer two weapon penalties (yes)
Shouldn't dralasite be able to ooze under a wall (You can only compress so much. That's too much for them.)
How do you make encounters with pulsars, black holes and exploding stars (not easily. They're a bit too powerful for PC's to mess with. Instadeath for one failed roll sucks. )
How many rockets fit on a rack. (not enough.)
Can ordinary ships carry mines (no)
How often are new systems charted (As often as there are brave and bold adventurers willing to go boldly where no-one has gone before.)
Do the sathar fight deep-space battles (not often. They prefer subtlety)
Can you modify a starship to land in water (Only if you never want it to take off again.)

The marvel-phile goes canadian. Ed'll be so happy. We get the stats for Talisman, Box, and Guardian. Not particularly good names, but at least they're not as crappy racial stereotypes as certain other nationalities suffer. As usual, they have a weird and varied set of special powers, and equally varied backstories. One of them is dead, but whether that slows him down for long remains to be seen. Jeff is his usual efficient self, despite all the other stuff he's been up to lately. The artwork is pretty good this month as well. No complaints here.

New tools of the trade: Gamma world details yet more modern day equipment. Funny how that works. Pistols, rifles, plus some hypertech stuff developed in the future from now, but before then. This time there's a nice balance between the realistic and the advanced stuff. Not many actual tools though, as it's mostly weapons, the title's a bit of a misnomer. I guess for adventurers, It's not that important. But I would prefer weapons that can also be turned to uses other than killing. Turnabout is fair play, given the improvised weapon stuff and all.

Wormy goes into the airmail business, with limited success. Snarfquest has more romantic misadventures.

I.C.E bumps MERP off the back cover, but puts spacemaster on there instead.

While recent issues have been illustrating the changes in the hobby, this one feels curiously old skool, full off stuff you don't see anymore. Still, it's generally pretty cool stuff, so I'm not complaining. Add in the prophetic MMORPG fiction, and whole host of amusing touches in various articles, and we definitely have a pretty cool package. Seems like last month's spirit of humour has been retained. Lets hope they don't start taking their fantasies too seriously anytime soon.

Dragon Issue 98: June 1985

part 1/2

100 pages. So they've reached the ripe old age of 9. Not that significant a birthday. They're gonna save up the fireworks for the big one oh oh. Unfortunately, they've had to deal with rather a lot of complaints who didn't get the joke in their april issue, so they intend to scale back on that a bit. Boo. We are getting a special feature for gamma world, and lots of new tricks for dragons, so this is probably still salvageable. Is this going to be a decent warm-up party, or a damp squib? Only one way to find out.

In this issue:

Warhammer fantasy battle 2nd edition! Bright red advert! That makes everything look more amazing! Just count yourself lucky we're not using ALL CAPS as well!

Letters: Two letters quibbling over What good PC's are made of. Once you start multiclassing, there's too many combinations for one article to cover. You'll have to skip the random rolls and think stuff up yourself.
A letter asking how goristroi can use magic if they're so stupid. That's the advantage of being innately magical. You can just do it with a brief exercise of will, without spending years poring over scrolls learning ancient languages and precise sequences of actions. Don't you just envy them? Oh, wait, that's a sin. Just another way they have to lure you into damnation. Go on, introduce warlocks into your game. You know you want too.
A letter asking why halflings can't learn forgery. Because they can't become assassins, you dumbass.
A letter asking if solars have an AC of 9 or -9. The MM2 got it wrong. Gary will have to rant at his editor again.
A letter curious about who the person is reflected in the dragon's scales last issue. An excellent question, that they cannot answer.
Some quibbling about the new rules. All based around a basic misunderstanding. Again. :sigh:

Tailor made treasure: It's dragon special time! So, why exactly do dragons covet treasure, and how the hell do they get it transported and properly piled up to form a proper hoard? A very good question. Not all of them can be as lucky as Smaug and get a whole prepotted hoard in one foul swoop. This is definitely something that can be brutally picked apart with a little logic. Fortunately, there are quite a few solutions, from extorting the local countryside, to sniffing out veins of gold and ripping them from the ground with your own gigantic talons. This article basically boils down to another one of those encouragements to develop backstory, do some worldbuilding, and personalize stuff for your game, rather than just relying on the random tables. Fun stuff, but not exactly groundbreaking. You'll have to put in quite a bit of effort to find a spin that makes this trope fresh and coherent.

The magic of dragon teeth: Ahh, this old bit of wacky greek mythology makes it's way into D&D.  Wanna take the teeth from a fallen dragon and use it to make your own army of devoted warriors? I'm afraid you'll need a wizard capable of casting 7th level spells to facilitate it. Like the dragonscale armor a few years ago, the results aren't objectively terrible, but they're certainly not worth the time and expense when you consider the other paths you have to obscenely powered stuff at that level. Personally, I'd ignore a big chunk of those requirements, to make the cool bits more accessable. So another article that has definite potential, but doesn't quite hit the button for me. Some people like fixer-uppers. Can't say I'm in the mood right now.

Dragon damage revised: And here we have another power-up for dragons. You know, they really ought to get more badass as they get older. A reasonable premise. However, it then makes a quite surprising assumption, that different sizes of dragons of the same colour are actually different species, rather than the same species at different stages of growth. So you have 3x3 matrixes with a certain degree of overlap. I'm more bemused by this than anything, as it's a case of having not even considered that someone could interpret the monster descriptions that way. Huh. Well, my mind is certainly expanded. Goes to show how you can be constrained by automatic assumptions without even realizing it. Interesting, if not in the way I expected.

The dragons of krynn: Ahh, now this is no surprise at all. I mean, their new setting has Dragon in the title. Of course they're going to do some stuff on it.  So they talk about how krynnish dragons behave. Thanks to the influence of their gods, they associate a lot more closely with mortals than the usual dragon, with Takhisis in particular trying to make them an integral part of her world-conquering armies. We start to see the curious combination of epic storyline, at surprisingly low level that defines dragonlance, with becoming a dragonrider and having flying lance battles with your enemies an entirely achievable goal for a PC. A good reminder that many of the ideas that made up the setting were awesome, it was just the implementation (and the other, not so awesome ideas) that were the problem. There's definitely some salvagable material here, and it's also a good bit of promotion, making the setting seem full of possibilities. I'm quite positive about this one, and it's a solid finish to our themed section.

Creative magic items:  Blah blah, don't just rely on the items in the book, make your own, plenty of spells and monster powers to convert if you're short of ideas, blah blah, common sense, game balance, watch out for unexpected ramifications, make magic items hard to destroy, blah blah. Seen it all before, probably will do so again.  

Detailing a fantasy world: Our PbP creator continues to chatter about his worldbuilding, giving us lots of familiar advice about the techniques you use to build a large setting, but being annoyingly vague about the world of Talara (spoilers, blah blah blah) that he actually created. This is a definite case where it's not that the article is bad, but it keeps on talking about the stuff that I already know, and evading the stuff I really want to hear about, like a political speech or something. Which is really rather frustrating. I guess you'd have to play the game to find that stuff out. Which obviously I can't do anymore. A whole world developed in great detail that never got published products, that has no net presence at all. (as I found when I tried to google it. ) Jim, and WotC people, if you're reading this, there are some people who would be interested in seeing the campaign notes for this released, if you still have them.

Wabbit Wampage! The game of bunnies with chainsaws, and whatever else they can get their paws on. Very amusing.

Reviews: Dragons of autumn twilight and winters night get a review specifically designed to assuage people's skepticism about buying them. It's great both as an epic fantasy plot, and as a representation of the AD&D universe and how parties actually interact. It goes from the personal to the epic, and has great poetry. Er, ok then. Sorry, you completely fail to remove my skepticism. If it was a product by another company, I'd be more receptive, but this feels too much like a disguised sales piece. I turn my nose up at you, pfaw.

Knowing what's in store: This is a strangely written but useful article. Mixing fiction with objective details, it tries to fill in what shopping would be like in a pseudomedieval setting for an adventurer. What is in different shops, (after all, no megamarts here. ) how are they likely to deal with people, and what you can expect to face if you try and steal from the places. The shifting of viewpoints keeps things more interesting than either would be on their own, and it's one of those ones you can refer too quickly to make sure you're not missing out some silly little detail. A good example of how to keep things fresh when imparting fairly mundane details, and how to make shopping fun. Why should all the action be in the dungeon? You can meet all sorts of interesting people and put plenty of plot hooks in while out looking for gear. And if you get into a fight, it's less likely to involve death. Very interesting indeed.

Auctions aren't forbidding: From one shopping themed article to another very different one, this is advice about how to do the auction house thing. One of those things that progress has changed dramatically, with the rise of ebay and online shopping in general. If you know the basic rules about how and when to bid to get the most for your money, this will all be familiar. Apart from finding out that old modules can already go for ridiculously inflated prices, I haven't found out much I didn't know before. This definitely has the feel of a quick filler article used to complete the page count.

The forum gets moved from the front to the middle. Another one of those little format changes that happens from time to time. Is it temporary or permanent? Guess we'll find out soon enough.
Paul F Culotta points out that Gary is only a mortal, the system isn't perfect, and even tournament games don't use ALL the official rules perfectly. The system ought to be revised to better fit the way most people actually play it.
Richard W Emerich shows up again, this time saying that no DM could enforce the game rules perfectly, all the time, and they probably shouldn't try. Most of the time, an approximation will do just fine.
Dennis E Jones Jr, on the other hand thinks that the closer you hew to the official rules, the fewer arguments there will be when multiple GM's interact, and players go from one campaign to another. Um yeah. That assumes that they like the rules in the first place. I regard your statement with bemusement.
Thomas W Gossard thinks that trying to hew too close to medieval settings in AD&D is silly (yes, you, Mrs Kerr) and you really ought to develop things based on the ramifications of the rules, rather than the real world. Ahh, one of the other great viewpoints that still crops up in debates today.
Todd Breneisner weighs in with his personal experience of multiple games, some of which adhered strictly to the official rules, but most didn't. Since AD&D was made in 1979, using refinements developed since then really isn't a bad idea.
Chip Myers also says that he's never seen a game where all the official rules are used. Frankly, the game wouldn't be as much fun if you did. Looks like the house-rulers are definitely in the majority.
Daniel J Birkholz thinks that alignment is stupid, and expecting people to stick strictly to one without any deviation makes for seriously inhuman acting characters. Make proper characters with their own likes, dislikes, personalities and flaws, not cardboard cutouts.

Dragon Issue 98: June 1985

part 2/2

Coming attractions has some damn big guns this month. AD&D is getting Unearthed Arcana, the great book of compiled twinkery that will change the face of the game. Meanwhile D&D is getting the master set. It may not be the end, as you thought earlier, but it's still another quantum leap in your overall power, plus a bunch of odds and ends for the lower levels as well. It's also getting B9: Castle Caldwell and beyond. Guess some people are still back there starting up new characters and needing introductory stuff. And if that's not enough for you, there's the best of the dragon IV, which is good for both. Yet more recycling in an attempt to make more money fast and save the companies ass.
Tons more stuff as well. The SPI imprint gives us wargames for Julius Ceasar's conquests, and WWII. Large scale games for players who think big.
Marvel superheroes gets MHAC6: New york, New york. So good they made two little books on it.
 Conan gets his piratical skills focussed on, in Conan the buccaneer. Will we get to go all the way through to his life as a king in future ones?
Star frontiers gets SFAD5: Bugs in the system. Venture into the upper atmosphere of a gas giant to fix a refining station. What could possibly be the cause. I'm guessing giant insects of some kind.
One-on-one adventures gives us it's second book, Battle for the ancient robot.
Endless Quest is right up to number 28, Mystery of the ancients. People do so love digging up the past, even when that's a bad idea.
And finally, the crimson crystal series has Renegades of Luntar, it's 3rd book. Set on mars, which seems appropriate.
Whew. That's certainly a lot of obscure game lines. It's no wonder they were having problems with that many things hardly anyone was buying. I wonder how long they'll keep making new ones in them.

Mutant manual: 12 pages of gamma world monsters make up this months centerpiece. Guess despite it not being popular enough for more modules to be published, there's still quite the holdout of people with lots of affection for it. We get 17 monsters: Aeroscpids (sic), Blade whales, Master Blossoms, Crusteans, Dracs, Encroaches, Flipps, Garrels, Harmony trees, Hogarts, Howlers, Jestes, Juggernauts, Marloks, Mountain men, Sifoners and Spitters. An array of bad puns, stuff stolen from books (including obvious conversions from D&D), exaggerated versions of normal animals, and really weird adapted plants, this is pretty quintessential gamma world material. You can fight them in the seas, you can fight them on the land, you can fight them in the sky, you can even fight them on the moon. (nice follow-up material there) Or you could play them as PC's, things like Dracs, Howlers and Sasquatches certainly seem suited to this. Despite the number of writers, this is a pretty consistent piece of work, that should be useful however you're playing the game.

Authentic agencies, part II: Guess this was too big to fit into a single article. Merle fills us in on the allied international agencies this time. Be they single country based or comprised of many like NATO, they're here, they're there, they're everywhere, and they're monitoring you! Or something. Once again, we have a long dry list which doesn't leave me with much to say about it. Will they cover the enemy agencies next month, or is this the end for this topic? We shall see.

Fiction: The forging of fear by Ardath Mayhar. Looks like the magazines most slated writer is back. This time she's delivering some medieval fantasy. And once again, I'm not sure which bits of it are funny intentionally, and which bits are funny simply due to the pretentious phrasing. She steals from a real english myth, and then follows up on it, before delivering a rather morally dubious ending. This is a definite case of something being entertaining because of the things that are technically wrong with it. Her works should be fine subjects for a little MST3King.

The volturnus connection: So modules in this era are generally rather sketchy on the matter of setting, context and character motivation. Star frontiers is no exception. So this is an attempt to build in some extra setting detail to the recent module series. Lots of historical and political exposition follows. Once again they do something they haven't done before, that I find a bit surprising. I guess this is the first precursor of the articles expanding on Paizo's adventure paths in the last years of Dragon. An intriguing development, that leaves me wondering if we'll see it again any time soon.  

When history goes awry: Ooh. Timemaster is getting an article. Always interesting to see a new game get some attention. This one concentrates on alternate parallel timelines. Fortunately, you have tons of novels to draw inspiration from, sherlock holmes, three musketeers, robin hood, and various other fictional characters to make real, and so forth. This is some pretty solid advice on how to handle developing alternate worlds and histories, working from the points of divergence, and going from there. Ripple effects, internal consistency, mythic resonance, this is cool stuff that's easily stealable for other systems. We haven't done much time travel stuff yet, and it has yet to be properly explored. Despite the challenges involved in time-travel games, there's lots of fun to be had in this kind of game. So another neat article.

Alone against the asteroid: One of those articles that does exactly what it does on the tin, showing you how to turn Against the Asteroid from a 2 player adversarial game to a solo one. This is accomplished pretty efficiently, with just a page of rules needed to control the challenges you face fairly randomly. Some of them can even be ported back to the regular game. Even not knowing the rules, this is pretty entertaining reading, letting me know about the quirks of the game's characters. Once again, they're tackling a new system, and coming up with things that are fresh and amusing to me. Definitely good promotion for the game.

Return to the vipers pit: Another module expansion in the same issue? Curious. This is rather less interesting than the last one, being another single pager full of corrections and things that got cut for space. Even the best editor can't fit everything in to everyone's satisfaction. Meh.

StarQuestions heads back to one of it's regular stops, Star frontiers.
Is there supernatural stuff in star frontiers (We recommend that there is only science that hasn't been explained yet. Truly magical magic would be out of theme)
What do you do after maxing out your skill. (get more ones. Being a hyperspecialist has it's drawbacks, so now you fill them in. )
You got a sample damage calculation wrong (Why don't you write in when we get it right. Seems like that'd be a more notable occurance.)
The amount of money you get varies between the basic and advanced games. Which is right. (Both are. Do you not understand the concept of different strokes for different folks. )
Can both your skills be from the same PSA (Yes, but they don't have to be)
Where are the stats for whips (page 43)
Can you put heavy lasers on a fighter ( I believe heavy is the limiting word here. No )
Can you trade ship designs (Sure, but negotiations may take a while)
Does starmist have moons or not (no. The artist was in their own little world)
How long do the repairs in SF3 really take (1 day)
What do extra crew members beyond the essentials do (Make things comfortable. Having to be perfectly efficient and austere all the time to keep things working is incredibly dull and exhausting. )

The marvel-phile: No new super-heroes this time. Instead, it's index time. With half a dozen modules, a year of marvel-philes, and a bunch of other products, it might not be impossible to keep track of who's already been statted, but it certainly can't hurt. It would be a bit annoying if two different writers did different stats for the same character, and ranty fan letters would be sent. So from Absorbing man to Zsaji, all 263 previously mentioned superheroes (and mooks, villains and other stuff) get alphabetized and their locations revealed. That's quite an impressive list. And just think, it's just a fraction of the amount of silly second rate characters that populate the Marvel universe. It'll be interesting to see how this grows if given a few more years of articles and products. Not sure if it's Jeffs writing or the strength of the source material that keeps even the index interesting, but somehow it manages it.

Wormy continues the tale of the bear and the minotaur in the big city. Snarfquest has still more romantic misadventures, and faces up to racism. Honestly, just fit a vibrator attachment on the robot and let it marry the princess. Everyone'll be a lot happier, at least until they start worrying about the lack of heirs.

I think the watchword for this issue is surprise. It manages to be fresher than anything reaching it's 9th year has any right to be, particular in the later articles, which are full of surprises. Once again they renew their commitment to covering all sorts of systems, particularly in the Ares section, which is really jam packed with stuff and punching well above it's weight. Goes to show. Just when you think there's nothing new in the world, something comes out of what seems like no-where to surprise you again. I very much approve. You can still surprise me, and I look forward to the next time you do.

Dragon Issue 99: July 1985

part 1/2

100 pages. Well, it looks like whatever the general public may think, according to the designers, Unearthed Arcana does indeed represent official AD&D v 1.5 or the 4th corebook. All future submissions must take into account the stuff in there, or they will NOT BE CONSIDERED. That's right. KNOWLEDGE OF ITS CONTENTS ARE MANDATORY CITIZEN! BE HAPPY THAT YOU HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SPEND MONEY ON EXPANDING YOUR UNIVERSE! THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME. Thanks for telling us that. I'm sure your public will be delighted to hear this. Or maybe not. Well, I guess if there are complaints, we'll probably see them in a few issues time. And then they'll get amusingly rebutted by the absolutely not biased at all editorial staff. But we won't get to see that if we don't get through this issue. So lets not look ahead too far.

In this issue:

Letters: Two letters on the ecology of the gorgon. One of them is another case of the silly editors messing up Ed's perfect work by changing things without thinking about the consequences, and the other is answered quite efficiently.
A letter full of questions on Blueprint for a big game. You need to read your dictionary more.
A letter from someone who got their modifiers the wrong way round. (They corrct him with mild amusement.
A letter from someone who's spotted a genuine mistake in one of Ed's articles. Math, you should check it.
A letter from someone who's noticed that the magazine has lost some height. It's only an eighth of an inch. Hardly something to worry about, unless you're in porn.

The Pendragon campaign, to go with the corebook. A year by year chronology of Arthur's reign. Obviously no-where near the depth of later versions, as it's only 80 pages long, but it's obvious Greg already knows pretty much what he wants this game to be. And if you got it right first time, why change it?

The forum: Bruce Carlson thinks that balancing races by making them differently unbalanced at different stages of the game is bloody stupid, and doesn't really make anyone happy. Instead, allowing unlimited advancement, but imposing XP penalties commensurate with your racial abilities is a much better idea. You may be onto something there.
Alex Bergmann, meanwhile, thinks that tracking how much worship power all the gods in your campaign are getting on a regular basis is too much bookkeeping. You'd have to spend all your time worldbuilding to do that. Two pretty non-contentious positions this time it seems. Not their highest moment.

The neutral point of view: Ahh, lawful and chaotic neutral. Some of the most interesting alignments, and yet undervalued and ignored in too many books. (yes, you, the entirety of fourth edition.) Trust Stephen Inniss to spot a hole like this and fill it. It would be entirely logical for the various detect/dispelprotection from good/evil spells to also have lawful and chaotic variants, and this would require no extra bookspace at all. Doing this would give the endless moral war more shades of grey, which has definite plot potential. You do need to clear up a few things to do with planar stuff, but that's not an insurmountable problem either. This is exactly the kind of article you should be covering in the magazine, doing things specifically related to the rules and setting. It could definitely stand to be longer, and have more info on more mundane playing of morally neutral characters, but what there is is solid material. Come on, give us some more epic articles really delving into things, instead of just skimming the surface.

Tables and tables of troops: A neat little expansion for those of you who choose to build a stronghold and attract followers at name level+. As this is the kind of thing that you only roll for once in your characters career, it could do with being expanded and customized, made more of a special event. Plus fighters don't get nearly enough love. So this allows you to change the specifics of your troops based upon terrain and how much you prepare for this. Which could definitely provide several sessions of fun gaming, as you maximize your potential rewards. They would later do variants on this for many of the kits in the Complete handbook series, and this is a development I'm pretty happy about seeing, as it expands on a previously neglected class feature. This is definitely one to note down and pull out when you reach the appropriate point in your games.

The ecology of the Will-o-Wisp: Hello again, Mr Findley. So you've submitted another ecology article. And as with the peryton he goes quite a way towards reminding us that these creatures are supposed to be creepy. He also does another clever thing by turning the boggart into the immature form of the Will-O-Wisp. This is a cool article which adds a good deal to the creature, including legends of a trancended race, and abandoned civilisation from before they cast off material form. (See what transcendance gets you. Hanging around in swamps killing people for kicks. Definite lesson there. Don't transcend, kids. It's like reaching nirvana. It's no help to anyone else, and sometimes will have results akin to summoning cthulhu upon any unenlightened nearby.) His flavour is certainly quite different from Ed's articles. And that's not a bad thing, as too many cutesy Elminster-delivered ones would grow tiresome. Their mating and lifecycle is ingeniously described, and there's plenty of drama in the fiction part. One of the best ecologies yet. Don't be a stranger.

That's life in the big city:  Ahh, city building. Are people still having problems with that? Well I guess what counted as a city did vary a lot over the centuries. You've gotta put a bit of research in, then make a big load of stuff up. Here's a load of potted info for if you want to build a pseudomedieval style one for your D&D games.  Lets not forget that they were pretty gross places in terms of hygiene, and there's all kinds of mundane hazards such as thieves, "Insurance" salesmen, dodgy food and goods, mockney urchins, fire outbreaks, etc etc. Demographics, mapping, ensuring you have the stuff needed for people to actually live there. The usual advice we have to sit through on a regular basis. No great surprises here, good or bad.

The role of books (they're flip-floping on the title of this series. What's up with that?): Crewel lye by Piers Anthony is as punfull as the rest of his xanth books. He seems to have learnt from the criticisms in recent reviews, toning back on the sexism and moral ambiguity. While other reviewers may slate him, this one doesn't seem to have much objection.
Stormwarden by Janny Wurts features weather magic as it's primary macguffin. The plot gets a little overcomplicated, presumably leaving lots of loose ends for future books, but the characterization is pretty good. One to enjoy for the journey, rather than the destination.
Witchdame by Kathleen Sky jumps on the current trend for english flavoured romantic fantasy. With deus ex machinas, completely undisguised real world analogues, and vague historical mooring, the reviewer manages to sell me off the book even as he praises it. Hey ho.
Enchanters end game by David Eddings is the final book of the Belgariad, Eddings big tolkien /rip-off/ homage. It hits lots of buttons, but doesn't really integrate the various types of writing very well. But it's still good popcorn reading for fantasy fans.
Talking to Dragons by Patricia C Wrede gets another review that starts with the negatives, but then winds up praising it. Only this time, the good bits outweigh the bad, in a genuinely funny fantasy romp full of near indestructible wizards doing horrible things to one-another. If you want to put humour that doesn't feel tacked on in your games (and that doesn't rely on dreadful puns like Piers Anthony. ) this is a good example.
The Magic cup by Andrew M Greely is an updated irish epic with lots of arthurian parallels. Remember, behind the legends, are people struggling to find their place and accomplish something important to them. Can you be both a person and an archetype? There's certainly plenty of interesting reading to have in tackling that question.

History of a game that failed: Ha. Ahh, the joys of taking the game all the way to it's limits, to the degrees where it starts to break down, where no monsters can touch you without rolling a natural 20. Most of us have done it at some point, rushing through the levels to obscene power and more items than you can keep track of. But it has to be said, the published modules really aren't much better in this respect.   If you just use the treasure tables as written, the system'll break down without any special effort from you. So how are we to get the system to behave. Let me count the ways. Fudge. Change the modules. Be stingy with treasure and watch out for synergies. Don't give away info they have no way of knowing. Don't allow ability score increases. Mess up their wishes. Nerf shapeshifting to buggery. Never miss an opportunity to have things backfire. Keep the XP awards down. Deities are not for killing under any circumstances. Don't let one person play multiple characters, for they will abuse the knowledge they get and co-operate in a manner that breaks verisimiltude. Don't be adversarial. (Have you just listened to your previous bits of advice )Oh, and don't allow nukes under any circumstances. Oh man. Where to start. This is a great example of how they have to exhort people to play nice with the system, because it just doesn't stand up to rough treatment. Very annoying on multiple levels, both that they give advice like this, which is a definite fun-spoiler when put against many people's playstyles, and that they need to do so in the first place. A most depressing read, overall.

Dragon Issue 99: July 1985

part 2/2

Reviews: Gems for Death is another system free module. Like so many of those at this point, they have to find other things to put where it would be. This includes incredibly detailed descriptions of the mechanics of traps, so you can disarm them by roleplaying, plus the usual characterization stuff and timeline. It has enough guidelines that it shouldn't be too hard to convert it to whatever system you want to use. Just don't put it into a hack and slash game, because the players might miss the point and ruin the adventure. Another case where just how much things have changed, not always for the better, is made obvious.

We get some more entries in the world gamers guide: Australia, New zealand, Germany, Japan, Venezuela. D&D has penetrated all around the world. Must take quite a lot of effort to co-ordinate all that subscription mailing.  

Coming attractions: Amazing Stories celebrates it's 60th year. Pretty damn impressive. Will D&D make it that far? Dragon may not have lasted as a printed entity, but at least it's still alive in some form. Can we beat that run? It'll be the story of our lives.
AD&D gets a Battlesystem module, H1: Bloodstone Pass. Take high level characters, and organize an entire village into a force to take on 3,000 enemies. Epic. It also gets Lankhmar, city of adventure. Once again, Fritz reinforces his close relationship with the game, having been away for a few years. If you want some help with urban adventures, this certainly can't hurt. And if that's not enough, Dragonlance is up to DL8: Dragons of war. Once again, the new mass combat system gets an airing, so you can get properly epic. This series is certainly building up to something.
D&D gets two rather less impressive products. Dragontiles II: The revenge of Rusak. Lots of fold out card thingies. And they say D&D isn't a mini's game. We also have CM5: Mystery of the snow pearls. A high level solo module. Don't see those very often. Once again, you have to do some serious puzzle solving. Well, you can fudge combat on your own, but puzzles. If you don't actually solve them, you can't go on to the next section.
The Indiana Jones RPG gets IJ5: Nepal Nightmare. Once again, Fold-up cut outs show up. Guess they were this year's gimmick, like putting CD's in would be for Mystara a decade later. I roll my eyes.
Super endless quest gets book 3: Escape from castle Quarras. Take the role of Derek Shadowwalker (Hee. Those two names do not fit together) and save the kingdom.
And finally, we have a standalone. Proton fire, the roleplaying game of designing and fighting your own robots. Another thing that I've never heard of before, and assume disappeared into obscurity. Any stories to share on this one?

Treasure trove II: We get two new articles based on magic items in this month's sorta centerpiece. Guess either one on their own wasn't considered special enough to carry the issue.
A sharp system for swords is of course all about the sentient magic weapons. New powers, updated ego calculations, and the usual advice to individualize and name your magic weapons, as this makes the world feel more solid and the players more likely to attach to them instead of seeing them as simply powerful tools. No great surprises here, but another solid set of toys for when you don't have time to invent this stuff wholecloth, or want to roll randomly just for the fun of seeing what comes out.
We then get 17 more items. Completely unsurprisingly, Ed Greenwood contributes significantly. All the big categories get at least one new item, plus some weird stuff like the oyster chest. (great idea, my dears. ) Most of them are pretty utilitarian and one-trick, rather than the massive lists of powers a single item can build up in the previous article. But they're mostly pretty cool. Particular kudos goes to the aforementioned chest, plus the armor of acid secretion (way to make a cursed item properly visceral. ) Potion of pain suppression, Rod of melting, and stone of mysterious sounds. Drama, comedy, and quirkiness are all fully represented. Another cool collection of old skool items, overall.

Kevin Siembieda not only writes the entirety of Monsters and Animals, he illustrates it all as well. My, he's a prolific bunny.

Authentic agencies, part III: Yep, I called it last issue. Here's the specs for the KGB, GRU, SSD, SAVAK, and other agencies you are likely to find yourself at odds with, as an american spy. Plus MELT, a fictional one that seems amusingly out of place these days. And that's about all I can think to say on this subject. Extended series do run into this problem after a while.

Fiction: Dennim and the golem by Robert S Babcock. Some people choose to retire from adventuring when they have the money. Others have it forced upon them. And many just die. The protagonist of this story may not make the big time, but he still comes out better than he has any right too. Some interesting thoughts about alignment and it's effect on the world are touched upon in this one, without it descending into heavy handed rules exposition. A quirkily S&S style bit of fantasy, that fits in the magazine very well.

ARES Log: Boo. We get an official announcement that we won't be seeing any more Gamma World modules or editions from TSR in the forseeable future. You aren't buying it, so we don't think it's economical anymore. Not that we've made any for years anyway, but with the heavy coverage it's been getting in the magazine, obviously some people have got their hopes up. Maybe in a few years time.

Tanks a lot: So star frontiers has stats for personal level roleplaying, and spaceship wargaming scenarios. But not stats for ground vehicle combat. A sad victim of cutting for space. Still, what is this magazine for then, if not to fix that kind of omission. So we get a full 5 pages of stats and tables, giving us lots of vehicle equipment, what it does, and how much it costs. Better hope you don't get your vehicle wrecked too often, because this stuff's pricey. Still, if you wanna get your mad max on, I'm sure you'll find a way, even if it means hijacking a vehicle and scavenging the remains of any enemies you run across. They certainly don't object to a little overkill in this one, and using it could make or break a game, depending on the GM. Which I'd definitely prefer risking to the article exhorting overconservatism earlier.

Psybots and battle mechs: We saw it in the Coming attractions section earlier this month. Now Proton Fire gets an article. The usual story of wanting to promote their cool new stuff. And yeah, this is pretty much a straight promo piece, giving us a synopsis of the setting, and not really contributing anything that probably can't be found in the book itself. I know you may be hurting a bit financially, but surely you could make the effort to put in some material that got cut or errata, something interesting like that. I'm most disappointed in you. This is not the way to get me to want to buy your stuff.

The marvel-phile is also on a soviet kick this month, with the Soviet Super-Troopers. (Lame name, but they're in fine company there. ) Vanguard, Darkstar, Ursa Major, and Gremlin. Two tanks, a battlefield controller and a techie. Not the most balanced party ever, but superheroes have always been more about the personality archetypes than the precise powers when it comes to roles. After all, it's not really about power, but dramatic imperatives. And there's certainly no shortage of plot hooks in their backstories. Repressive governments just give superheroes more to rebel against. More superheroic stuff that's great fun, but can seem somewhat ludicrous if you don't buy into the tropes here. How many of these nationality themed groups are there? Will colour coded spandex ever go out of style? Will Jeff cover another country next time? Tune in to find out.

Danger on a budget: Looks like despite the pessimistic editorial, Gamma world will continue to be a regular on these pages for quite some time. It still has a small but vocal contingent of hardcore fans who keep sending stuff in. This is another load of familiar advice adapted to a different system, reminding us that you don't need to throw bigger and badder combats at your players to keep things interesting. In a postapocalyptic wasteland, the sneaky are more likely to prosper than the big tough guys with machine guns who need to get lots of food and regular supplies of ammo from somewhere. So sneaky psychic enemies, environmental hazards, traps and roleplaying encounters are just as important as straight battles in creating a somewhat realistic campaign. Realistic? Gamma word? Well, if you really say so. Another article that contributes nothing I don't already know and probably will see again virtually every year of the magazine.

Wormy continues the bright lights in the big city. Snarfquest hangs over the perpetual pit and panics. Dragonmirth mocks Conan again.

For all the big changes D&D may be about to go through, there's a lot of overfamiliar material here. Sandwiched between two big issues, this definitely feels like a filler episode, with all the really good material held back for later. Apart from the really strong ecology, everything else is Ok to poor. Guess I'll just have to move on to the big one oh oh, see what stuff they've been stockpiling over the past 10 months for it.

Dragon Issue 100: August 1985

part 1/2

116 pages. Time for the magazine to make a quantum leap, in the most literal sense. They've obviously decided to push things out again for the big number. However, this also means the price goes up, all the way to $3.95. They'd better have something to justfy this. Starting right away, they have a cover that's sculpted, rather than painted, which is very interesting, and the photo captures the three-dimensionality of it quite nicely. A nice idea for a change, but one that could go wrong if overused. Lets hope they don't start doing covers from posed dolls. We also have a whole bunch of special features, for both D&D and other systems. Whether this is as spectacular as they hoped is yet to be seen, but it's definitely going to be quite different, in any case. Which means it should be interesting for me as well.

In this issue:

Letters is actually not comprised of specific letters at all for a change, but is instead an extensive Q&A about the workings of the magazine and lots of other related stuff. As usual, we get told just how much hard work it is getting consistent product where creative endeavours are involved. The dreaded deadline beast needs feeding, and so often there will be something going wrong that results in them scrambling to get everything done on time. Which means the time they have to read  and answer letters and assess manuscripts is not as much as they'd like. If you want to be published, you'd better make your articles both eye-catching and well written, because with their current volume of stuff, if it doesn't get their attention on the first read-through, it's going to go straight in the slush pile. We don't have time to fix up cool but flawed articles like we did in the early days. Interesting to note that marvel super heroes is definitely the second most popular game in the magazine. Not so interesting is the usual disclaimer that their Roger Moore is not the film star Roger Moore. Like most of these editorials, this is a welcome look into where the writers heads are at at a particular point in time. Can you go fast enough to jump on board their train? Good luck with that, because you'll need it.

Kim reminisces about the time he's spent here. Seems like only yesterday he walked in nervously, and got given a big pile of manuscripts to go through as his baptism of fire. Next thing you know, he's head of the department, putting together a hundred page magazine with a six figure circulation every month. How did they get there? One step at a time, just like any journey. And despite the hard work, not particularly stellar pay, and general weirdness, he still loves his job. But we can't rest on our laurels. Here's to many more years of cool gaming products.

Score one for sabrotact: Looks like they're trying to put a little LARP material in here again. They do seem to try that every few years, but it never sticks. Most frustrating for all involved.
Anyway, this is a most fascinating way of expressing the boffer LARP principles. By  attaching a bunch of target points to the people fighting, and having proscribed scoring systems for breaking specific ones, they remove the fighting from the realm of fiat without much danger of real injury by the participants. Of course, the buy in costs and need for large numbers of participants may be a problem. Still, this is definitely a game that has potential. Does it still get played these days, or has it become just another historical footnote?

All about the druid/ranger: Ahh, one of the more awkward things in D&D's design. Druid and ranger are both nature based classes that complement each other well, but alignment restrictions mean you can't be both at once. So to allow this, you need to bend a few rules in their respective strictures, creating characters who balance their commitments to nature and the people from the borderlands who explore it. This is a definite roleplaying challenge. Frank Mentzer also takes the time to examine some of the game's metaphysical assumptions. Do druids and rangers get their spells from the same source, and if so, why are they held to very different standards? Could rangers who act too lawful or chaotic wind up being denied spells? Once again we see the writers being confronted with ramifications of their own rules that they hadn't considered before, and the implied setting that results in. Organic writing does result in a whole bunch of weird resultant effects that you could never get if you planned it all out from the start. Is this a good or a bad thing? Probably a bad thing in this case, but there's plenty of instances where it has turned out for the better. This may be a small article, but it's jam packed with thought-provoking stuff. You could have long, fun flamewars as a result of this.

The forum: Michael D Selinker thinks that while there's nothing wrong with changing the game to suit your group, you ought to at least try playing it as written first, to make sure it isn't to your taste. If you can't handle playing AD&D as written, maybe you ought to go back to basic D&D instead.
Brian McCaskill tells a story about his D&D experiences, and the stages he went through as players munched out, and then lost interest. Already, people are drifting away from gaming because they don't want to be seen as uncool. We need to regroup and reassess what we're doing if we want to keep this hobby around.
Chad P Culotta (no relation) also thinks that the official rules are unusable, and you should examine them to use the good bits, as well as incorporating the good stuff from the magazine. Are we getting close to a consensus here? How very surprising. They'll have to find something else to flame about.

Pages from the mages V: Since he's one of their most popular writers, and this is one of his most popular series, having a 5th installment of this seems a very logical choice for Ed's contribution. As in the previous installments, we get 4 spellbooks. Exactly how Elminster knows so much about all these is still unrevealed, but he's definitely quite the font of lore as well as having a certain sense of mischief. He's becoming more defined by the article as much as the world he describes.
Sabrine's specular comes from the north, and runs the range from small to mighty, with three new cantrips, plus bladethirst, Merald's murderous mist, and one of those marvels of quirky magical design (Blatantly cribbed from Larry Niven) Spell Engine.  Just the thing to have in your study, make sure people don't cause too much havoc.
Glanvyl's workbook is slightly less spectacular, with 3 more cantrips, plus a copied druidic spell for no apparent reason other than the compiler found it, and a couple of Ed's cookery recipies that just go to show how much cool detail he can casually create.
The red book of war is actually a cleric's prayerbook, not a spellbook. Guess Ed's tired of wizards getting all the new spell goodies, and is looking for reasons to share the love. I approve. As this is for Tempus, the FR god of war, the new spells within are quite useful in combat.  Holy flail and bladebless handle the offensive and healing side. Reveal has huge strategic advantages, and sacred link has all manner of twinky possibilities in the hands of an inventive player. Wizards don't have to have all the spell-hunting fun on their own.
The Alcaister is a decidedly dangerous book to possess, with it's lethal pages and tendency to send you through a one-way gate if you read it wrong. But if you can survive it, you can learn a lot, including 3 new cantrips, plus Reconstruction and Body Sympathy. More ways in which wizards can mess with unsuspecting people and prevent themselves from dying.

Fiction: At moonset blackcat comes by Gary Gygax. Oh Gord.  Oh Gord Oh Gord Oh Gord. Have you guessed what it is yet? Yes, it's the start of the Gord novels. Be very afraid. So we get a short story featuring Gord & co to promote it. In a bit of ingenious cross-promotion, our protagonist is playing Dragonchess in the starting illustration. It even features in the story, so it's not just a tacked on bit of pimping. Once again we see Gary get away with stuff no-one else would be allowed to in this magazine, with whores, gambling and drinking aplenty, and even some proper swearing. This definitely stands out, if not always for the right reasons, with overblown prose and a decidedly fiaty plot which leaves lots of questions unresolved. Will they be answered in the actual novels? Do you want to spend the money to find out? We won't judge you if you do.

Dragonchess gets a new edition. This complex variant on the traditional game runs across three boards, has 15 different pieces, each with their own idiosyncracies that'll take a while to learn, and supports some pretty heavy tactical play. Once again we are reminded that while D&D may be their big breakaway hit, Gary also enjoyed wargaming, model railroads, boardgames, and other similar hobbies, and wasn't short of ideas for those either. They really should have pushed this one harder, as it certainly shouldn't have been that hard to get this into commercial production and onto the toy store shelves at this time, and chess is a perennial game that seems to sell quite nicely without the endless revisions RPG's go through. This is another successful attempt to push the boundaries of what this magazine does, and definitely goes on the list of things I want to do when I have some free time. (ha) Drawing up and cutting out all the needed bits and pieces would be an adventure in itself.

Issue 100 was a real landmark issue of Dragon for me. I don't think I ever felt the same way about the mag afterwards.

I had really been looking forward to this issue. In retrospect, I can see that no issue could have lived up to the anticipation. But, even given that, I think the issue fell short of the mark even when you discount the overinflated expectations.

I can clearly remember what my main problem with the issue was. When I first picked it up and rifled through it, I felt a definite sense of deflation when I found the Gord story. Fiction in Dragon was, and is, still my least favorite thing in the magazine. I'd been waiting with a nebulous anticipation of Gygax making a huge appearance with all kinds of new goodies for AD&D. Instead I got something akin to watching Michael Jordan play baseball - yeah, I got to see the master at work, but in a context in which he clearly doesn't shine.

None of the other articles were standouts to me. I guess I expected a lot more out of an issue 100 for the flagship D&D publication.