Dragon Issue 109: May 1986

part 1/3

108 pages. The abominable snowman attacks on the front cover, in a dynamic, but slightly cartoony image. Can brave brave sir robin defeat him? Who can say. Meanwhile, inside we have another attack of the missing feature, as the 24 page Gen con Preregistration booklet they mention in the contents page is not in the scan. As ever, I would very much appreciate assistance in filling in missing bits like that. However, we still have the full 108 pages, even without it, so this is still going to be another long, tiring issue. Will I sink into a happy sleep of a job well done at the end of the day, or will I still be laboring to think of something interesting to say? Seems likely, I'm afraid.

In this issue:

Letters: Ha. Someone's realized that they've been hitting the supplement treadmill a lot harder recently. They don't like it, because it means they can't keep up with everything. Kim of course tells them that they shouldn't try too, they should just pick and use the bits they like. /buy everything. you know you want too/
An accusation of being a house organ, because they put TSR specific previews and profiles in. Kim gives a rather snippy response, pointing out all the things they've done recently that aren't purely for profit.
A letter asking a dumb question. How do you expect to survive the tomb of horrors with an attitude like that?
A letter asking why Gary changed his mind on an issue. People are entitled to that, are they not. Businesses even more so, when staff changes. There are a lot of things happening in the world, and promises can not always be kept, even if we wanted too.

The forum: Dr John F McDermott would like to battle the problem of fearmongering about D&D by doing an official medical study of people's roleplaying experiences, and how they have benefited or suffered from playing. Write up your adventures and send them in to him. Please do not send spam or hate mail just because he included his address in the magazine.
Glen Sitton would like to remind people that the greyhawk flavour in the core rules is just there as an example, and is relatively easy to strip out. Don't feel you have to have a Boccob and a Myrlund in every world. Don't be afraid to not put valley elves in there either
Gordon Hull thinks that the rules for the maximum number of spells a magic-user can know per level are stupid, especially when they can erase one from their books and learn another one. After all, how smart you are has nothing to do with the size of library you can own. A cogent argument.
Paul D Ingraham would like to remind you all that the GM is the boss, and shouldn't tolerate players who throw tantrums because you change the rules or introduce new monsters that aren't in the books. They'll respect you more if you're firm, and if not, no gaming is better than bad gaming. Or something.
Fritz Freiheit would like to point out that guns are not automatic instakill weapons in real life, any more than you can hack at someone with a sword for hours and they'll be fine in a week or two. Guns in D&D should not be exponentially more powerful than all other weapons. Remember D&D's escalating hp system isn't remotely realistic in the first place. And making weapons that have the same odds of killing you at higher levels is against the spirit of the game. There is a reason why damage is fairly static, and saving throws get easier as you advance.

Customized classes: Oohh. This is wonderful. Three months ago they gave us the biggest collection of classes yet. Now they give us the keys to the kingdom with an idea that would make it into the second edition DMG. Build your own classes by assigning point costs to various abilities, and adding them all up to determine the XP multiplier for the class. It's a bit clunky compared to the 2e version, but still, it's a great idea, and another one that you can redefine your entire campaign by using. (of course, as the cost is based around XP multipliers, you can make an utterly brutal 1st level character for a deathtrap dungeon you're not expecting to survive, and not face the downsides) It includes lots of sample classes generated using it as well, and shows how the standard classes would be balanced using the system, which is also pretty helpful. (Clerics actually turn out way more expensive than wizards, which is amusing when you consider they also have one of the lowest XP costs in the standard game. CoDzilla was already right under your nose.) Now that's the kind of thing you start an issue with. A classic article in it's own right. When you factor in that this is also Paul Montgomery Crabaugh's last posthumous contribution, it acquires extra resonance. A very fitting legacy, for someone who loved gaming so much. What's that? No, it's just a bit of dust in my eye. Honest.

The barbarian cleric: Looks like we have another class straight away. Funny, that. They go years without introducing any new ones, and suddenly, dozens come along at once. Anyway, this is a good demonstration of what happens when you forbid a class from multiclassing. Someone'll just go and make a hybrid. The barbarian cleric, aka shaman, medicine man, wokan, witch doctor, and all kinds of unpronounceable titles. Their relationship to gods is less the fealty to one big one that ordinary clerics swear, than a process of negotiation with whatever spirits happen to be around. They get a big chunk of the barbarian's wilderness dealing toolkit, plus some minor wizardly powers, bardic lore, and assassin poison making; at the cost of some of a cleric's spellcasting ability, a brutal advancement test system, and truly obscene XP costs, more than three times any of the standard classes at higher levels. Which I suppose is fitting, given that they're essentially a one man band, able to fill every party role themselves in a wilderness setting. I'm really not sure if the costs and drawbacks would balance them out when put with a regular party, but if you were playing a solo game, these guys would be the perfect pick. While slightly underwhelming in scope compared to the previous article, I would also be interested in testing this one out, partially out of morbid curiosity.

Fighters for a price: Mercenaries. People who fight for those who pay them. (As opposed to adventurers, which derive most of their wealth from the people they kill. ) A risky life, because no-one really trusts you. Yet they get everywhere, and are still found in war-torn areas today. Guess It's like prostitution (and I suspect the two trades do regular business with one-another. ) So here's a long and crunchy article on the finding, hiring, and maintenance of merc squads in D&D. They can come from many races and backgrounds, and have quite different capabilities and price ranges. While still a useful addition to a game that you can slide in without too much trouble, (if the DM will allow it, as many would get awkward if the players suddenly decided they'd prefer to do the job with backup, rather than play the big heroes on their own) this is a much less interesting read than the last two articles. So it goes. Back to the coalface to uncover the gems.

Worth its weight in gold: Oh, this is hilarious. A guide to dwarven beards,and how they style them throughout their lives. And this writer definitely falls into the female dwarves have beards, and they're proud of them too camp. As does the illustrator. From their first adolescent sproutings, to courtship, to marriage, to venerable elderhood, a dwarf's beard can tell you a lot about them. And since it's so important to their social status, it's no wonder they have a distrust for those pointy eared hairless pansies from the woods. It might be pure fluff, but I found it very entertaining, without being a complete joke. You shoulda had this last issue. We could do with some more light stuff like this in here.

The ecology of the displacer beast: Now here's a classic D&D monster. With an ability that exists purely to confuse people, they are pretty nasty predators, but not so far removed from real creatures as to seem utterly detached from the ecosystem. We get plenty of detailed physiological chatter in this one, taking us from birth to death, and talking about their antagonistic relationship with blink dogs. A very sage-ey entry, with lots of IC academic talk, this is good, but not exceptional. Needs to make a bit more stuff up, rather than sticking to the details in the manual.

This issue has one of my very favorite Dragon covers.

Dragon Issue 109: May 1986

part 2/3

The role of books: The initiate by Louise Cooper is a story of a world where the cosmic balance has shifted too far towards Law, and the protagonist finds himself being the one to overturn that. Neither side is really good or evil, and both have understandable motivations for doing what they do, so it's a tough choice who to sympathize with. Where will the rest of the trilogy take them?
Shuttle down by Lee Correy is an interestingly prophetic story of space a space accident, that turns out to be sabotage. Espionage, bureaucracy and sci-fi aren't the most obvious bedfellows, but this combines them quite well, to produce a tightly woven plot that is eminently stealable for your game.
The seekers and the sword by Michael Jan Friedman tells the tale of what happens after ragnarok. Most of the norse pantheon is wiped out, the world has recovered, and there has been thousands of years of relative peace. But someone always has to spoil things, and It's up to the peaceful Vidar to save the day against a cunning and mysterious adversary. This makes good use of the old legends without being bound by them.
Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly is another story of a dragonslayer who really isn't as impressive as the legends make out. The dragon is really just the macguffin that drives the story, with lots of political and romantic intrigue involved as the protagonists try and figure out how to solve this problem, and who's really behind it. Even the dragon gets a proper characterization.
Where dragons lie by R.A.V Salsitz, on the other hand, is just another generic dragon hunting story. It gets a thoroughly mehsome review.
Time of the twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman is the start of the new Dragonlance series. Raistlin's gone evil, and it's up to Caramon and Tasslehoff to stop him. But first, Caramon has to beat the demon drink. So it's not an entirely bowdlerized tale of happy shiny heroics and cardboard cut-out villains. Which is probably a good thing. After all, what would be the point of a straight retread of the first series?
The warlock enraged by Christopher Stasheff continues his interesting series about a real wizard on a planet full of SCA'ites. Only now he has kids, and they're developing unusual powers as well. This is going to get even more interesting as new factions show up to cause trouble.
Spinneret by Timothy Zahn is a rather complex sci-fi tale of discovering new technologies, trying to unravel them, and the competition between various factions, as they try and take advantage of these new discoveries. Which would probably be rather a headache as a world for gaming in, but it does make for fascinating reading. You'll have to steal and adapt carefully if you want to use the ideas from here.

War machine revisited: Now this is an underused subsystem if ever there was one. The mass combat rules from the Companion set get an expansion in this article. Naval combat, scouting, and lots of sample forces and officers. This is nice to see. I'll have to dig my companion set out and see how mechanically sound they are. Scouting in particular has a rather fiddly procedure attached to it, with math that seems more about clever use of dice rather than emulation of the realities of scouting. This is the kind of stuff you should only use if you do use the war machine in your games frequently, as many of it's rules involve the idea that you will be keeping a largely consistent roster of troops, replacing the ones that are lost, and advancing the ones that survive through multiple battles. Like the barbarian cleric, I'm still skeptical as to whether including them would improve a game, but I would be very interested in testing them out, so I could know for sure.

The uncommon tongue: Languages makes another appearance in this guide to ye olde english, and how to incorporate it into your game to make things sound more medieval. Because even if the language in your fantasy world sounds nothing like english, and hasn't evolved in a remotely similar way, it's still a good shorthand for previous eras that most people have at least a casual acquaintance with. You can't really be expected to invent a world wholecloth just for a weekly game. And if you did, your players probably wouldn't find it as easy to enjoy anyway. A little familiarity like this is probably for the good.

The paragon society for wargamers advertises itself, but not very well. I don't remember these guys, so I am dubious as to their survival prospects. Anyone remember this?

The eleven (sic) fighter/mage miniature from ral partha? They really need a better editor.

Locals aren't all yokels: So you have players who think they can act like arrogant jackasses whenever they come into town, who consider emrikol the chaotic a good role model. After all, they're just 0th level peons. What chance do they have against someone who can unleash fireballs, or windmill their way through mooks like a cat through a roll of toilet paper. Well, remember you're not the only game in town. Chances are, in a dangerous world, there are plenty of people who worked their way up to a decent level, then settled down with their ill-gotten gains due to laziness, shyness, love or political ambition. And remember, age is not a serious impediment in D&D. You have plenty of excuses to scatter higher level characters through ordinary settlements. Homicidal arrogance will rapidly become suicidal unless the DM is deliberately making the opposition incompetent. A single page article that makes an important point.

Toon now has a couple of supplements. How much can you add in terms of new monsters and adventures in such a simple game?

Blades with personality: Ahh, sentient weapons. A fine field for roleplaying, as they can wind up forging a personal bond with their users that can be stronger than their attachment to any NPC. Here's another quick single pager that reminds you that you can make treasure your players encounter much more interesting if it has a history, and in many cases, a personality. Even if they're of the same alignment, they can sometimes disagree with their owner. When they crave souls, can take over your body, or have a Machiavellian plot, it becomes a real choice if their powers are worth it or not. Another one of those articles that says something we've seen before and will so again, but does it fairly well.

Giant-sized weapons: Oh, here's a nicely prescient little article. Instead of big creature's weapons being arbitrarily assigned, a proper formula for scaling up weapons based on their original damage for man sized creatures, and their new size would be a very good idea. So here's a nice little table doing exactly that. Annoyingly, it doesn't cover scaling down, so it's not as good as the later edition's versions. Still, this is something we haven't seen before, and which seems like an obvious idea once someone's brought it up. It also has some other info on using weapons designed for different sized creatures, missile weapon ranges, and tactical considerations, which is nice. Another case where the magazine was way ahead of the times that I'm very pleased to have discovered. Have some kudos, Stephen Martin.

Hooves and green hair: Ahh, the joys of satyrs and dryads. This libidinous and highly dimorphous fae species are entirely partial to having a little fun with humans. And sometimes, it goes beyond just being a little fun, as they wind up having kids with them. So yeah, this article gives you the statistical info needed to make half dryad/satyr PC's. Neither are hugely powerful, and of course, both are quite good at  dealing with nature related stuff. While nowhere near as impressive as the class stuff earlier on, they're still a flavourful addition to the game, although they may irritate those who would like the lechery kept out of their role-playing. Looks like introducing new crunchy stuff aimed at PC's is on the up at the moment. What are we to make of this?

Profiles: Jeff Easly is another of TSR's most popular and prolific artists, producing covers for lots of their recent books. He seems to be a visually inclined person in general, making sculptures and models, dressing up, and generally brightening peoples lives with the stuff he creates. He's a friend of Larry Elmore, and got a job here because of him.
Ruth Hoyer is the Art Director, which of course means she gets to order people like Larry and Jeff around. Not that they're likely to object, really. She's the one responsible for their recent logos, particularly the Dragonlance and Star frontiers ones. She's surprisingly scientific for an artist, with a definite preference for clean, functional designs. Another part of the machine that makes production values here rather better than they were back in the 70's.

Dragon Issue 109: May 1986

part 3/3

TSR Previews: At last. The immortals set is finally here. Now you can take your D&D games all the way, and actually win the game. Godhood is just the beginning. You've got to work your way up to supreme deity, Twice. Have you got the skill (and patience ) to manage it. I'll wager the number of groups who've managed to do it fairly from 1st level are even fewer than those who completed Knightmare.
AD&D gets CA2: Swords of deceit. A trio of short adventures set in Lankhmar. You even get to be the big heroes and save Fafhrd and the Mouser in this. How very unusual. We also get I8: Ravager of time. In it, your players are aged to near death, and have to find out how to defeat the villain while suffering the ravages of time and get their youth back. How very cruel. I'm betting a certain amount of railroading is involved to make that premise work.
We also have the Best of Dragon part 5. That means we have more than 1 per 2 years the magazine has been around. Guess we're still getting in plenty of new people who want stuff from old issues. And if they want it, who are we to deny them a chance to spend money.
For our 8th AD&D adventure gamebook, we're going back to Baba Yaga's hut. Since it's by the same author, I'm guessing there will be lots of similarities with our last visit.
Dragonlance is up to it's 5th book, War of the Twins. Can Caramon and Tasslehoff save the world from Raistlin. Surely, otherwise we wouldn't get any more books in the series. Question is, at what cost, and how much cheese will the writers throw at us while they do it?
One-on-one gamebook number 6 is Amber sword of worlds end. And once again, it looks like it does exactly what it says on the tin. Will the barbarian claim the sword and wield it with his mighty biceps. Or will the monk retrieve it in the name of his temple. The power is in your hands.
Finally, coming atcha from Canada, It's the Balderdash Game, one of their new family party games. Are the words and their definitions real? You get to educate as well as entertain your kids, expanding their vocabulary to quite excessive degrees.

Administrator's advice: Here's this month's Top Secret article. It's a big load of GM'img advice, helping you build your campaign. After all modern gaming is quite different from fantasy gaming. (although you can change that, by adding hypertech, bond style, and going overboard with the fame and fortune points. ) Still, there are lots of things you can't do in a modern setting, especially if you want to keep recorded history the same as the real world. On the other hand, there are plenty of things that you can do that you couldn't when you have to make up your own fantasy world, and you can travel anywhere in the world fairly easily. Lots of solid, specific advice here, that should help keep your players acting appropriately for the world, and make your games fun. Since we've had plenty of general advice by now, this kind of highly specific, focused stuff is just what's needed to keep long-term readers interested and developing their style. This may of course not be newbie friendly. But it's a big magazine now. Surely they can strike a decent balance between articles anyone can understand and ones that require a decent degree of expertise to build on.

Fiction: Valkyrie by W. J. Hodgeson. Love. It has caused much joy, and much suffering. Sometimes both at once, such as when a supernatural being falls in love with a human, and has to either watch them age and die while they stick around forever, or become mortal and suffer the ravages of time with them. A bittersweet result at best. On the other hand, if you're very lucky, the gods might show you mercy, and grant you an ironically happy ending such as this one. After all, they move in mysterious ways, and sometimes what they secretly want is someone to defy their word and prove their worth as a true hero. So this is an unusually happy ending to a story given the source material. I don't have any objection to this.

Fighting the good fight: Space Opera is our first stop this month in the Ares section, with a bunch of new tricks and variants for combat. Facing, parrying, and disarming.  Three elementary matters that have been abstracted away in the game's combat system. Is it any wonder that some people want to insert them. Some will call that unneccacary crunch that misses the point of the game's design. Some will call that perfectly reasonable. I've been in both camps in the past, but this time I fall in the perfectly reasonable one. After all, without options like that, the game just becomes one of basic taking turns to attack, gradually wearing each other down. And where's the fun in that?

Patriots, terrorists and spies: Looks like metaplot has already snuck it's way into star frontiers, with cults suddenly increasing in frequency in FY 111 due to a supplement. This is an interesting development. And as ever, people will always want to introduce a few more, and this magazine is a good way to go about it. So here's 8 new cults which your players might theoretically join, but it's much more likely that they'll appear as adversaries. They include socialists, racists, religious fanatics, psychics, and those that fear them, and general self-advancing secret societies; and generally exist to provide plot hooks for players to investigate. Hey, you can always use a few more of those. Another one of those cases where due to the space limitations, they have to boil them down to their basic concepts, leaving out all the nuance and specifics. You'll still have to do a ton of developing if you want to use them in your game.

The double-helix connection: Mutants. A fairly familiar sight in here, thanks to gamma world. But they're not so common in traveller. Nor are they as powerful, with flaws almost as common as drawbacks. But then, Traveler is a lot more realistic than gamma world. That's not to say they have no place as PC's, as characters being exceptional in some way does help build interesting stories. So if you like, when generating a character, roll to see if they are a mutant, and then roll to see what powers they get. Your odds are around the same as your chances of getting psionics in D&D, and it's just as much of a crap shoot whether you'll get abilities that are useful and what you want, and learn how to control them properly. Still, that is the Traveller chargen way. If you don't like the way a particular character's developed, just roll up another one. Nothing hugely wrong with this article.

A change of diet: Speaking of gamma world mutants, they don't get neglected this month either. But they don't get too much either, as this is only a half page article. Seems like they're doing lots of short articles this month. So yeah, six awkward dietary restrictions your character could suffer from. What fun, everyone!!!! Anyone? No, I'm not enthralled either. Nuff said.

The Hero system makes a joke about it's own complexity in an advert. Pretty amusing.

The marvel-phile: Just as he did last year, Jeff provides an index of all the characters detailed by them so far, in every supplement, module and magazine article. And he intends to make this a yearly event, since this is an ongoing process for an active game line. So from Abomination to Zsaji, we're now at over 300 superheroes, creatures and organizations. Still plenty more to go though. Just don't ask us to do Transformers, Godzilla, GI Joe, or most of the other properties marvel does comics for, but don't actually own. They're not part of the license, no matter how we might wish otherwise. Onward! The advanced game is now out, and there's still tons of bits of this huge tangle of a universe we haven't filled in yet! Ahh, Jeff. You always know how to brighten my day.

The keys to good SF: Having made a visit to all their usual stops this month, they finish off this month's Ares section with some general role-playing advice. Sci-fi has the potential to allow quite different plots to fantasy, but often, the goals remain the same, with only the window dressing changed. Unfortunately, unlike the Top Secret article earlier, the writer fails to take her own advice, and gives us two and a half pages of yer usual world and character building advice. Because lets face it. Hard sci fi is hard, and of interest to a far smaller sunset of people that stuff that uses the ray guns and funny shaped people as merely backdrops to human drama. Once again, I am forced to say ho hum.

Dragonmirth gives apprentices some schooling. Snarf uses his anachronisms. Wormy continues setting up for the ultimate wargame, while others plot his downfall.  

Despite the presence of several amazing articles in this issue, this has mostly been another long slow slog. Are they just not getting enough really good articles to justify their size? Are they deliberately playing it over-safe by rejecting weird stuff and publishing ones similar to the ones they've done before? Are they holding their A material back for the birthday issue again? Was the magazine losing it's sparkle around this time for you as well? Or is it just me, consuming too much as usual? I think I need a bit more exercise to work all this information off. Still, that's why I changed my schedule. Now I'd better make sure I make the most of those extra few free hours a week.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 1/3

108 pages. Welcome to the 10th anniversary issue. How are they going to deal with that. They've already covered tons of topics, many of them multiple times. What new things are there to discover? How can they improve on the general format? Well, they wouldn't have asked us if they didn't want to know. Because let's face it, they have been struggling for ideas of late. While they could probably go over the same old ideas again and carry on for the next 10 years, diminishing returns would set in, and they'd get as bored as we would. Kim certainly wants to keep both us and himself interested, so he's not going to take the easy option. Well, that's pleasing to hear. Lets hope he can justify those words over the next few issues.

In this issue:

Letters: A letter asking how the ranger's nature skills interact with the general skills system. Because of course, we have one now. Oh, how mathematically awkward. What shall we do?
A letter by someone who didn't understand the swarm rules in the pernicon ecology. Treating a swarm as a single creature is a nice abstraction that saves you lots of time. It does mean they don't count as lots of 1 HD monsters, but really, that's a plus, because it means they provide a challenge to a wider range of adventurers.
A letter asking if we'll ever see computer gaming return to the magazine. Funny you should say that. We were just about too The readers have spoken, and we have listened. Hope you like it.

The king arthur companion for pendragon now available. Who's who, what's where,  and what do all those legendary items do? Read it for lots of extra setting info.

The forum: R. Zane Rutledge has recently reconsidered his subscription as a result of Daniel Myers complaints. Although he agrees with some of them, he has decided, on balance, that the magazine is still worth reading each month. A very considered letter here. Interesting.
Philip Winters has some thoughts about what happens to society when wizards are fairly common and willing to sell their powers for an affordable price. While continual light spells lighting every house is the biggest and easiest one, there are plenty of other cool ideas you can incorporate.
Daniel U Thibault engages in lots of nitpicking about the decay patterns of various radioactive isotopes. Elementary physics, my dear. This is the kind of thing the writer in issue 108 really should have researched better.

The cult of the dragon: Dracoliches! One of Ed's more impressive inventions, this gives us details on how you make one, the minutinae of the transformation process, and the special abilities they get once transformed. It also includes plenty of details on the social order that create and worship them. One of the early examples of template building, this definitely shows you how to spice up your dragons, making them distinctly more badass, both individually, and in terms of social support network. Before, if you killed a dragon, you could take their hoard, go home a hero, and that'd be the end of it. But now, you'll not only have to deal with the dragon again unless you can destroy their phylactery, but you might well have to face a whole load of powerful spellcasters and other dracoliches as well. Use with caution, because dragons are powerful enough already. But if you're in the upper teens or 20's in terms of levels, and even the biggest monsters are no longer a challenge for your team individually, these guys make great overarching adversaries for an epic game. Ed has once again looked at events happening in gaming in general, and figured out how to incorporate the ideas into the forgotten realms, while also making them just generic enough that you can insert them into your own game without too much trouble as well. He really is very good at this. A strong start that is very fitting for the anniversary issue.

Mekton. The game of giant killer robots! It's taken this long for someone to realize that transformers fans are a good crowd to target for gaming? Tch Tch. How do you expect to make money if you can't spot a gap in the market.

For better or norse part 1: Ahh, the norse pantheon. Second only to the greeks in the popularity of their legends. See what being a fractious bunch who are basically just humans writ large gets you. They've already got plenty of airtime in D&D, with quite a few magical items based off them in the core rules, (hammer, gauntlets and girdle for the win) and a whole chapter in Deities and Demigods. But since they have whole sagas about them, there are people who want more. Unlike with the centaur papers, they've decided not to combine these two articles into one, despite them having some overlapping stuff. After all, there is no Canon beyond what you choose to include in your game.
This first article gives us stats for the Vanir. Not quite as famous as the Aesir, (probably because they aren't as loud and violent ) they're still an interesting bunch, and including them opens up more avenues for godly politics, with multiple factions competing for worship in the same area. We have a mixture of gods, demigods, and monsters which may not be gods, but are still mean enough to present a challenge to them. Angur-boda. Edger. Gerda. Grid. Gullveig. Hati Hrodvitnsson. Skoll. Hermod. Mimir. Nidhogg. Njord. Ran. The Tempests. Utgard-loki. Vafthrudnir. Volundr. (whew) This nearly doubles the size of the pantheon. Which is pretty useful, if you're playing a game in an appropriate milieu. And if you want to be god-slayers, this is one of the more appropriate pantheons, given the number of horrible monsters they have around them. Another fairly decent article.

For better or norse part 2: A rather different and more focussed article makes up our second norse offering. Where the first one was largely crunch, this one has more extensive essays on a few specific deities. Niord (curse you, inconsistent translations! ) shows up again, with different stats, and Frey, Freya and Loki get expanded on from their D&DG entries. Loki in particular gets altered quite a bit, as the writer disagrees with the official interpretation of his personality. Ahh, the annoyance of drawing from a mythos that is inconsistent in itself. How very tiresome.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 2/3

All about Elminster: He's been telling us stories for nearly 5 years now, this mysterious sage. He spins tales of beasts and magic, spells, trickery, swords, shields and rings, histories and possible futures. But all things must change. He can't stay mysterious forever when so many people are curious about him. And so the 10th anniversary of the magazine is where Ed finally chooses to give us concrete details about the teller behind them. And this is one instance where the results are probably bigger than most suspected beforehand. A 26th level magic-user, with 3 18's in his attributes, and nothing below 12, he possesses vast magical and psionic powers, and travels universes with ease. He talks with the undead, sleeps with goddesses, and has developed some of the most twinky tricks you've ever encountered to keep his ass safe. But he still maintains a quiet little home in the Realms, and doesn't meddle in politics there openly, leaving that to others. We also get a bunch of new spells, and huge amounts of detail about the history and other big players in the realms. This really opens up the lid of the stew he's been cooking over the years, and it smells delicious. After this kind of showing, how can they not give Ed the chance to publish his world properly. People must be clamoring for more. Unless they're the sort who think there's too much mary-sue cheese in this mix, which is understandable. But as you can probably tell, I don't. At least not yet. When will it become too overcooked for me? We shall see.

The role of computers: As they said earlier, Dragon is opening up to review computer games again. How very pleasing. In the time they've been absent, computers have crashed, come back, developed massively, and are now far more common than ever before. Consoles are also just starting to make inroads into america. But let's not get ahead of ourselves and jabber on about stuff that falls outside this column.
Straight away, they recognize that if you just want to read computer game reviews, there are other magazines that specialize entirely in that, and can review far more games every month, probably in more depth. So to justify their place in Dragon magazine, they need to remember they're writing this as roleplayers, for roleplayers. A laudable statement. Let's hope they stick to it.
Their first big review is Wizardry. Wait a minute, I hear you say. Didn't this get reviewed in this magazine back in 1982 in issue 65? Why, yes it did! Don't worry. Not only is this a new set of reviewers offering a new perspective on things, it's also a new version of the game, on a different platform, with considerable improvements in the graphics, (although the specs are still pretty risible compared to modern computers. ) a massively improved save game feature, (saving mid adventure? Unheard of! ) use of the new Windows format of displaying multiple things at once, and lots of other awesomeness that will soon become common practice in programming design. It manages to improve on a game that they already have a nostalgic attachment too.
We also get 9 capsule synopses of other computer RPG's at the end, rounding off this column nicely. This is another case where it'll probably take them a few issues to really find their feet and strike a good balance of reviews, chatter and guides. Still, the magazine has taken another step outwards in the topics it covers, and towards the format it had when I started reading. Overall, this is a very pleasing  addition to their roster.

Dragon damage revisited: Leonard Carpenter returns to follow up on last year's article on dragon attacks and how they scale with age. I know more about how the 1st ed system quirks now, so this doesn't provoke the bemusement it did last time. We have new expanded scaling charts for the 5 Gem dragons from issue 37, the 8 oriental dragons from the Fiend folio and Oriental Adventures, plus the Cloud, Mist and Shadow dragons from the MMII. We also get some design notes to help you adapt this kind of thing for your own campaign. After all, one size doesn't fit all. Maybe you want different dragons to the generic D&D ones. I'm generally happy to see follow-up articles going into more depth, particularly when it's an idea I approved of in the first place. I do vaguely wonder why this wasn't put at the front with the other dragon article. Eh, not important. I'd enjoy it just as much if it was right at the back.

The house in the frozen lands: Looks like we're getting one of our last modules before Dungeon starts up and takes that job over. And they spill out a bit, going to 17 pages on this one. Curiously, it feels a lot like the Top Secret module set in the antarctic, with the same formula of troubles getting to the remote frozen location that's been taken over, and then dealing with enemies that are superficially polite, but really just want to get rid of you, and will kill you if you probe their secrets. Thankfully, there is no threat of nuclear apocalypse if you fail, but there is still the potential for wider political ramifications if you play this one right and tie it into your campaign. The maps are pretty good as well, (although the only toilet has a water weird in it, which may be a problem. ) A pretty solid adventure that could take up a good few sessions and play out in several different ways. Ok, It's no baba yaga or city beyond the gate, but it's still pretty decent. Once again, it looks like they've been saving their good stuff for the important issues.

TSR Previews is still the wrong way around.
AD&D is getting the dungeoneers survival guide. Further evidence of the acceleration of the supplement treadmill, this is lots of advice for your dungeon explorers and builders. Here we go again, into the breach.
Terrible swift sword and Barbarossa are finally out ...... or are they? Oh, the annoyance. We also have a whole bunch of goofy stuff. The Paramount Movie and Broadway stageshow board games. The Honeymooners.  What is this? More attempts for them to tap completely unrelated markets, I guess.
Marvel super-heroes is going Advanced. More crunch, more maps, and a whole bunch of gimmicky crap in the box. If that's not enough little pieces to get lost, you can get the 4th set of miniatures, with a definite X-men theme to it.
Endless quest gets book 33: Knight of illusion. Seems pretty self-explanatory. Damn Illusionists. Proper wizards just blast you and have done with it. But no, you have to be given a chance and wind up facilitating your own demise in ironically amusing fashion.

Dragon Issue 110: June 1986

part 3/3

Fiction: The wizard's boy by Nancy Varian Berberick. Oh, inscrutable wizards. What pains in the ass you are. Always concealing your motives and goals from the people you work with. Things'd be a lot simpler if you just explained upfront what you're up too (at least, the nontechnical aspects. ) then we could help you achieve your objectives more efficiently. Still, I suppose when looking for an apprentice, if you let them know what you want, power-hungry people who would abuse the knowledge would fake it. If you remain inscrutable, things may take a little longer to plot out, but you know they're real when you see them. Yeah, this is one of those tales of a young boy growing up into a powerful wizard, and not having a particularly easy time of it. Not the most original idea, but again, not badly done either, with pretty decent characterization and magic. Guess we're finally slipping back into the filler material then.

Knowledge is power: Seems like every new RPG that comes along these days has some kind of skill system, especially the ones that eschew classes and levels for a more ad hoc advancement where you only develop what you practice or choose to spend XP on. Games such as D&D and Gamma world are starting to seem rather outdated as a result of this. Just knowing what their players know or can describe them doing can result in huge imbalances in character effectiveness, even if they have the same stats. D&D has recently had a basic nonweapon proficiency system introduced in Oriental adventures, and in a few months that'll be rolled out for the regular classes in the Wilderness survival guide. But Gamma world is currently rather short on supplements. So here's a basic system for it. A very basic system indeed, as the skills are purely binary, most of their capabilities granted are handled narratively, and he neglects to give XP costs for learning new ones. Like the secondary skills in the original AD&D book, these rules are so vague as to be virtually useless. Frankly, you might as well just keep on using fiat, because you'll have to anyway if you try and incorporate this.

The marvel-phile: Having mostly been presenting minor heroes I've never heard of recently, Jeff decides to bring another big gun out for this issue. Ghost rider. The kind of name you'd have to be a fool not to use. And one of marvel's few legacy characters, (I wonder why DC wound up with more) where the person with the name changes, but the name remains in use, because it's a valuable bit of intellectual property. ( I have to wonder when we'll see a return of Shadowman, since that's another name that's too obvious for them to leave undefended for some other company to grab.) This is one case where the powers and style of the people possessing the name have varied wildly. Even what they ride varies, with one being a biker, and the others being horsemen. This is important, as it shows how you can progress the continuity of the universe without losing touch with the iconic bits. It's like monarchy. The person may change, even the family, but the state continues. The cycle of life and death goes on. All is well with the world. Or something. Another pretty pleasing contribution from Jeff. Lets hope he can keep that up when they transition to the Advanced game next month.

Going for a swim?: Looks like we have another case where the writer is filling in rules that you would think should be obvious. Star frontiers has no rules for swimming. I guess when you're in space most of the time, the idea doesn't come up. Fortunately, the gear needed to survive in space and underwater has quite a few similarities, only you don't need to carry your own oxygen supplies. Anyway, no great surprises here, as we get rules for movement, underwater combat, and the bends. The quirks of the various alien races are dealt with, as are those of equipment. One of those articles that falls under the solid but dull category.

Piece of the action: Hmm. Introducing the mafia to Paranoia games as a secret society? That's actually a pretty good idea. After all, using a bad italian accent for your character, having secret agendas conveyed by coded doubletalk, and wielding odd weapons is entirely within the spirit of the game, especially as most commonly played back then. Will you be loyal to the Family, make a profit for them, and work your way up the ranks, or will they be as prone to "retiring for health reasons" as the other members of your troubleshooting team? Either way, I find this quite an entertaining little article, that's useful in itself, and also reminds us that nearly any real-world organization or ideology can be converted to a paranoia one with hilarious results. It may require you to reduce the randomness of character generation, particularly if it's a player who came up with a cool idea for a society, but that's hardly a gamebreaker. This isn't WHFRP, after all.

Dragonmirth mocks polearms. Not hard to do. Snarf's little leech thing saves the day. Wormy features a very impressive giant showdown indeed.

Get subscriptions at a bargain price as a 10th anniversary gift! How generous of them. Not as generous as a lifetime subscription, but they wouldn't be so dumb as to offer them anymore.

Looks like Ed is the real star of this show, delivering a one-two punch that comes close to his classic work on the nine hells. Even if he stopped here, he'd already have more than won a place in the D&D halls of fame. But no, next decade is going to bring even bigger things for him, as his world becomes the biggest, most fleshed out campaign world in the entire AD&D multiverse. And this issue has several hints on how that's going to happen. The rest of the issue is considerably better than most of their recent offerings as well, with more big articles, stuff looking back on old things and building upon them, and stuff looking forward and trying out new ideas. I'm definitely coming to prefer the issues with several big articles that link into gaming's overall history to the ones with tons of tiny shallow unconnected bits and pieces. And I'm guessing at this point, plenty of other people will feel likewise, or we wouldn't see the rise in metaplot we do over the next decade. After all, it's not an inherently bad idea, it's just that like any idea, it can be done wrong. And if you link everything up, then one part being fouled up causes problems for everywhere else, while if you have independent replaceable bits with multiple redundancy in your design, you can keep the bits that work and ditch the ones that don't. But I digress. This is about gaming, not mechanical engineering, even if the lessons from one field can be transferred to another. Unless you guys actually want me to go off on tangental discussions and rants when they occur to me. Because that's certainly an option.

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 1/3

108 pages. Another month, and they continue their drive to regroup and reorganize their staff. Roger Moore has left the Ares section to become the head editor at Dungeon magazine. Meanwhile, they are encouraging their artists to make more money by reprinting cover art as posters. More money for the same amount of work. Hopefully this will mean they'll be amenable to reprinting the art in later D&D books

In this issue:

Letters: A letter asking if dust of appearance disrupts a displacer beast's displacement. The answer is a very definite yes.
A letter about sexism. Two actually. The first involves the barbarian cleric and if women can become one, due to it's exclusive use of masculine pronouns. The other is from a female reader who would prefer more equal opportunity cheesecake. Ahh, the perennial sexism problem. Still a long way to go to equality. Any time now we'll be getting another women in gaming article. Ho hum.

The forum: David M Axler has a bunch of quibbles about the weather article from issue 108. Everyone's an expert. It's almost as bad as the stats for gods arguments.
Andy Price talks about talks about the nature of magic. If the gods are really infinitely powerful, granting spells should be no problem for them, regardless of where in the universe they are. I think that's where the flaw in your logic is. You have read the current god rules for D&D.
Jaldhar Uyas thinks that locals aren't all yokels was a dumb and unsubtle article. There are better ways to encourage investment in the world than making every third NPC 15th level. Is that a strawman I see here? You exaggerate the position of your opponent.
Scott Paul Maykrantz thinks UA sucks and will not be buying it or allowing stuff from it in his games. From everything he's seen, the new additions are a bunch of crap. Take that, T$R! Charming.

Good stuff, for a spell: Hmm. Magical items that allow you to spontaneously convert your memorized spells into spell energy, which when channeled through the item, produces some other spell. What a novel idea. This is an exceedingly prescient article, presenting a whole different way of balancing your characters capabilities by making sure their items are linked to their own powers, rather than working constantly, a fixed number of times a day, or running out after a while. As a direct ancestor of both 3e cleric's spontaneous conversion, and weapons of legend, this is definitely one for the files. As the writer himself says, this idea is like inventing the wheel, once you've done it, you can apply it to all sorts of situations, and are amazed no-one thought of it before. And so design technology takes another step towards the present day. A pretty damn good way to start the issue.

Welcome to Malachi: They get hinted at occasionally, but you don't get to see inside them as often as I'd like. Other people's campaigns are a ripe source of articles, as they can be much more specific and take a definite stand on topics that a generic article is likely to end up sitting on the fence over. But only Ed has managed to go from articles sent in independently to a fully detailed published campaign world, and he's a massive outlier. Well it's a tricky route to take. Let me tell you about my campaign world is only one step up from let me tell you about my character. It takes a special kind of storyteller to keep tales like that interesting for long.
Anyway, this is an example of what you can do to a city when spellcasters are common, and fully integrated into the infrastructure of the world. Clerics take the lead, revolutionizing health and living standards, while magic-users provide all kinds of expensive (but hopefully long-lasting) luxury items. Spell component vendors make a tidy profit selling to both, and adventurers can make good money by offloading all those monster pieces to them. This is the kind of conceptualizing I am strongly in favour of, interlocking the rules and setting to create a world that runs off it's own internal logic, and develops and reacts accordingly. The writer has developed this place through several years of actual play, and has lots more data on it to send to the magazine if it's readers are interested. (hint hint) This is a pretty nice article, full of fun ideas and tips for you to steal and adapt to your own game. This is the kind of thing I'd definitely like to see more of in the magazine.

DUNGEON™. Adventures: Roger Moore talks about his new job, being the head editor of Dungeon magazine. A definite step up from running the Ares section. And what he wants from you guys who are thinking of sending in submissions. D&D modules only, no more than 16 pages, send a proposal first, typewriting and SASE essential, you must surrender all rights to us, we pay flat fees not royalties, absolutely NO greyhawk stuff will be considered (because Gary owns that, and we're currently in backstage wrangling with him, but we mustn't mention that) and tons of other regulations to wade through. The kind of deal that frankly, I wouldn't sign with an 11 foot pole unless it had the potential of making me millions, and in that case I'd be engaging in hardball negotiations to improve it. (plus if I could produce a legible signature writing with an 11 foot pole, I'd be using my amazing dexterity to other ends) Oh well, that was standard back then, and all I can do is try to avoid falling into the same trap. And I suppose money from any source is better than no money. You've gotta love the job to do it, because you're never getting rich from it. Man, I wonder why I bother sometimes. Sorry about the cynicism. Just another reminder that the underside of the creative process is an ugly business. Best just to enjoy the flowers produced instead of sniffing the manure it comes from.

No campaign ever fails: Monty Haulism gets tackled again, from another perspective. Absolute power is not so important as if that power is fairly earnt, and if the characters are facing challenges commensurate to that power. Even if things have got out of hand, it's entirely possible to change a few things around, and bring them back under your control again. If you use NPC's as trap-springing fodder, a rebellion is pretty likely. If one character starts getting out of hand, award the group an item they can't use. Be very cautious about letting in characters from other campaigns. And if equalizing upward doesn't work, don't be afraid to do a little draining. A fairly balanced tackling of a topic that's never going to go away. Meh.

GURPS! It's finally out! The most modular system ever, according to them. And they're probably not far off. Especially once you add on all the supplements over the years.

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 2/3

Microscopic monsters: Oh, this is nice. Stats for giant versions of microscopic organisms. We've already seen a relation of this for gamma world, so it's no surprise that someone has decided to do similar stuff for D&D.
Protision is a giant amoeba colony that has developed sentience through a communal hive mind. It is slowly growing, has learnt magical abilities, and wants to keep growing until it covers the entire world. What an awesome plot hook. Yoink.
Perdinium shoot little bolts from their pores to attack enemies. They can also produce bioluminescent flashes. If Beholders are related to anything from the real world, it's these guys.
Gonyaulax are tentacled, armored basketballs. In large groups they can really mess up your water supply. Only the tarrasque would drink stuff infested with them.
Ceratium has armor plating and a long saw-like appendage to attack with. Very interesting looking little creature, really.
Noctiluca can not only engulf you or strangle you, it can generate flashes of light with bioluminescence and dazzle you as well. Quite a effective set of hunting tricks there.
Euglena look like tiny squid with only a single tentacle.
Paramecium have lots of little sticky threads covering their exterior. Don't step on them, because they'll eat your foot. They might trap your weapon as well, which is always a pain in the ass.
You ought to know what Amoeba are. Blobby things that engulf their food. Merely gross when watched through a microscope, when they're big enough to consume you, it gets rather scarier. They're considerably less scary than things like ochre jelly and black pudding though. This writer does seem to be rather conservative with his statistics. Eh, slap pseudonatural, paragon and gargantua templates on it and that'll change pretty fast.
Elphidium are a combination of entrapping threads, and a shell-like central part. This means that they're much easier to escape from than they are to kill. They're mostly scavengers, so just steer clear and you won't have to worry too much.
Globigerina are like organic mines. They float around, and then entrap you in their spines. Don't go swimming at night. As if you didn't have enough hassle from bear-sharks.
Dictyostelium is one of those cases where reality is weirder than fiction. Comprised of lots of little mushroom like amoeba, when times get tough, they fuse into one big glutinous mass to migrate to a more suitable place. Like an organic spaceship, this allows them to travel further and protect themselves along the way. As they do so, they form specialist organs, blurring the line between many single celled organism's and one differentiated one. Isn't nature awesome? And the giant ones here are even moreso.
So we've not only got lots of new monsters, but I also know more about real world biology now as well. This is a great example of how reality can be stranger than fiction, and stealing from it is needed to make your stories better. The trick to seeming fresh is to not steal from the same sources as everyone else. And there's certainly plenty of weird corners of the microscopic phyla that don't turn up in fiction very often.

The role of books: Magic kingdom for sale - sold! by Terry Brooks features his usual smug self-righteous writing style. This reviewer doesn't seem to consider that a dealbreaker, however. It makes good use of info from Brooks' original day job to create a twisty plot that seems to keep their interest.
The curse of Sagamore by Kara Dalkey is the amusing tale of a man who really doesn't want to be king, cursed to be so due to his ancestor's funniness. There's plenty of humour, both IC and OOC, and it should give you ideas on how to make your players lives miserable in an entertaining way.  
Yonder comes the other end of time by Suzette Haden Elgin ties together magic and psionics, and also ties together her earlier novel series', which had previously been unconnected, into one larger universe. The reviewer is somewhat ambivalent about this shift towards epicness, enjoying it, but not sure if it's justifiable.  
Witch blood by Will Shetterly is quite different from his previous book, being a story of witches and magical martial artists. What could become cheese easily, does not, as he creates a dark atmosphere, and a strong narrating voice for the protagonist.
The cross-time engineer by Leo Frankowski tells the tale of a modern day man thrown into 13th century poland, trying to industrialize it early to protect it from the mongols. What ramifications on history will his actions have? Keep reading, because it looks like another long book series ahead
The unicorn quest by John Lee may not be about dragons (again) but the reviewer can't find anything much about it to recommend. Damn you, generic fantasy tropes. :shakes fist: I can see you coming a mile off.
Interstellar pig by William Sleator is an interestingly meta tale of a game of world destroying potential, and what happens when you're not sure if the key to saving your world is winning it or losing it. The various elements are juggled adroitly, in a thought provoking manner. Just what sci-fi should do. After all, silly ideas can allow you to comment on the world in a way that would be ignored or censored in a more serious product.

Death of an arch-mage: Looks like we're getting one last module in these pages before Dungeon fires up. And it's quite an impressive one, both in length (21 pages) and ambition. A murder mystery in D&D? Don't see those very often. Amusingly, the tournament pregens are just 1 level too low that they would be able to do some resurrecting, which is good thinking. On the other hand, 2 of them are illegal dual classed characters, which irritates me. It also puts a lot of onus on the DM to set the proper tone, and fill in spurious details to obscure the important bits, which may be problematic. With big chunks of their magical powers forbidden, they'll have to use mundane investigative powers, or choose to go maverick and risk spoiling the case. So yeah, this could be good, or it could be incredibly annoying, and go disastrously wrong very easily, it very much depends on having the right DM and players.

TSR previews is back to the right way around. Dragonlance is getting pole position this month, with DL13: Dragons of truth. Can they pass the nine tests of truth? Can they beat Takhisis? Considering the next module is called Dragons of Triumph, the odds seem good. It's also getting another calendar for 1987. Seems a bit early to release one now. Eh. Get a few months just looking at the pictures before you have to write on it.
AD&D is also getting REF2: the revised player character sheets. Unearthed Arcana made the previous ones redundant. Ahh, joy. Another excuse to sell you almost the same stuff again.
D&D gets IM1: The immortal storm. So you made it this far. Can your adventures as a god match up to the ones that came before? Well, at least they're trying to support it. We also get X11: Saga of the shadow lord. See, if you were the previous characters you could wipe out an army of undead no trouble. Oh well. Guess it's not heroism if it's not a struggle.
Our solo gamebooks get the Sorcerer's crown, book number 9. Our first one that follows on from a previous book. Will it involve further sequels? The dread hand of metaplot reaches into even here.
Marvel Superheroes gets MA1: Children of the atom. All about the mutants of the marvel universe, and adventures for them. As this is the advanced game, the supplements are bigger. Are they better? Wish I could tell you.
Amazing stories unleashes it's second anthology. Visions of other worlds. Containing stories from some of the biggest names in sci-fi. Have their prophecies been proved correct? Since this is a retrospective, I'm betting at least a few of them have.

One thing to keep in mind: even well into the 1990's, many had no access to photocopies. Character sheets therefore were consumables, not copymasters.

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 3/3

Profiles: Jeff Grubb is of course one of TSR's most awesome game designers. The son of a teacher man, he's always been pretty damn smart. (apart from maybe thinking playing D&D would be a great way to meet girls, but even that seems to have worked out for him. ) He's responsible for the gods of the Dragonlance setting, the name of the planet the Forgotten realms is set in, virtually the whole of the marvel superheroes RPG, and is now writing the manual of the planes. His contributions are pretty much inextricably linked with gaming as we know it. Go him.
Anne Gray McReady is one of our editors. She's completely normal, honest! Nothing to see here at all! Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Anyway, she's responsible for editing all 5 of the BECMI boxed sets, as well as writing the savage coast, so she has made some cool contributions to the D&D universe. Ah pity da foo who believes her lack of hype.

Pull the pin and throw: Grenades! We've seen quite a few questions on them show up in Spy's advices over the years. Guess they thought it merited a whole article. So we get three pages of dry stuff like how they're constructed, what they have in them, concussion radii, a scatter diagram, and the all important damage done. Will this settle those arguments, or just reignite them, in ever more fiddly nitpicking detail? Either way, I'm not very interested by this article. Another load of crunchy filler to keep up the page count with.  

Fiction: File under B by Esther M Friesner. Oh dear oh dear. The buttoned up young librarian runs across a near-naked barbarian warrior transported into the library by the evil wizard he was fighting. My oh my :fans self: This can't possibly be happening. We must get him out of here before somebody sees. He can't really be from a fantasy world, surely? But if he is then maybe the index can help me get him back. Now, is it in fiction or nonfiction? And then they get back to his world, great acts of heroism are done, bosoms start heaving from the exertion, and it all has to be faded to black before the author starts typing one-handed. Ahh, fantasies. Isn't it great being able to sell them. This is cheesecake, but amusing cheesecake, obviously written by a woman, for women. Nice to see them tackling the problems mentioned in the letters page. Can they keep that up, or will the accusations of sexism be back again soon enough. At this stage, I'm gonna take the pessimistic view. Some people will always bitch, especially if you bend over backwards to accommodate them and they think they can get more stuff that way.

Dark phoenix gets on the cover of the ARES section. She then gets a good going over in their first article. How do you portray and play characters as ridiculously powerful as that in your game? You'll have to take things away from direct fights, and concentrate more on the emotional aspects and fallout of the drama. Or just make sure you have some characters with invulnerability or huge amounts of plot immunity. Remember, in comics, resurrection is always an option. Just don't do it too often and cheapen death completely. An interesting topic to cover.

Maxima: Villains and Vigilantes shows off it's own maxed out capabilities. Which are actually considerably less than FASERIP's, but there you go. Maxima is a geneticaly engineered superwoman from the future, with all stats at an obscene level (and a weight of 663lbs Is that a specific artifact of the system's tables? ) superspeed, regeneration, but no real powers that aren't just human potential+. We also get a little more advice on using a character like this in your games, particularly if the other PC's aren't as powerful as this. Pairing off groups so each character has a suitable opposite may seem cheesy, but it's an established genre trope, so you shouldn't feel guilty about using it. Everyone has weaknesses, and you shouldn't be afraid to use them either. Even with different power levels, everyone can get a chance to shine if you design adventures right.

Supergirl: Well, this is nice. Our theme continues with a DC heroes article. I'm betting stats for Superman already appear in the corebook, but if you want to showcase obscene power of a kind PC's would expect to have, then supergirl is your next good bet. Despite her power, she's certainly got beaten around, mindfucked, romantically screwed over, and eventually killed with great glee. And as Jim Ward showed, way back in the monty haul days, it's entirely possible for a sadistic GM to follow that example, no matter how powerful you are. We get more advice on how to run high powered characters in general. When collateral damage is a constant threat, and you're the good guys, you really can't cut loose with your powers the way you'd like too. If they can travel miles in seconds, make them split their attention. If they can move planets, then they'd better get to use that power. Tailor the villains to the heroes, and put them through the wringer. Just like the real comic books. Remember, the more powerful and versatile the characters are, the less you have to play nice, because if they're using their brain, they can solve even problems that don't have a designated solution. (unless you're playing something like Armageddon or Aberrant, where damage scales faster than ability to absorb it, so characters paradoxically become more fragile against equal opponents at higher level. ) Another interesting article that once again puts a different spin on the same topic.

The marvel-phile: With a ton of supers stuff already and his own profile this month, Jeff's contribution gets heavily edited to fit on one page. Longshot, an alien stuntman with powers appropriate to his name. The switch to Advanced hasn't altered the formula of these entries significantly. As this is another character I've never heard of before, isn't that interesting, and will likely never see again, I can't muster much enthusiasm for this one. Hopefully having his writing butchered won't dull his enthusiasm though, because it would be a shame to see him lose it.

Quantum: Our final article tackles the same subject they've been tackling all through the section, only for a different system. Finally, it's Champions' turn to get some advice on how to handle characters of different power levels. This concentrates on scaling your characters, and scaling the opposition to them. It includes the eponymous character Quantum, who's power level fluctuates randomly due to some rather clever build tricks. She can challenge gods one day, and then get her ass kicked by a gang of thugs the next. Which is quite pleasing, both that the game can handle weirdness like this, and that there are plenty of people who have no problem with really high level games here. Plus the writeup and illustrations are pretty cool. This is quite a nice way to finish off the section, even if it is a bit galling that it's been comprised entirely of superhero articles. Still, at least they're trying with the themes, and the april fools jokes and stuff when the rest of the magazine isn't. That stuff sometimes gets excluded because of this is the price you pay. If it's good stuff it'll just show up a few issues later anyway.

The Snarfquest gang has to get away with the treasure they just found. Dragonmirth shows us a real monty haul dungeon. Wormy features more variscaled adventures.

Overall, a pretty good issue, if another one that was a real effort to get through. Still, in this case it was definitely worth it, with new developments in game design, lots of info on dungeon's start-up, and a good send-off for adventures; and a very interesting and well-focused Ares section. They're still probably not getting quite enough good material to justify their bigger size, but since so much of that is a matter of taste anyway, I'm not going to complain too much about that. And it looks like the spate of development and reorganization is going to continue into next issue, which seems promising. But that's a tale for another day. I'm not Schazerade, and I don't think always starting a new story before the night is over and finishing in the middle would suit the source material. Cliffhangers get tiresome after a while, so lets just leave it at this.

Quote from: aramis;337228One thing to keep in mind: even well into the 1990's, many had no access to photocopies. Character sheets therefore were consumables, not copymasters.

We always just scribbled (or in one case, carefully drew using a ruler) out stuff on bits of paper. Even at my most unquestioningly consumerist, I thought there were better ways to spend your money than official character sheets. Plus you can usually fit more info on that way, as the official character sheets for a line are rarely the most efficiently designed.

Dragon Issue 112: August 1986

part 1/3

108 pages. Looks like their promise to change things wasn't a hollow one. Straight into the contents page, and the Ares section is conspicuous by it's absence. Well, I guess last month's one was as good a send-off as any, both in the sense of being a good, well focussed one, and also a demonstration of how thoroughly it had been hijacked from it's original purpose by superheroics. Some people aren't going to be happy about these changes, and indeed, Kim isn't too happy about all of them either. Some hard decisions had to be made here, and he's really hoping they were the right ones. Still, better to try something new than trudge along in the same old rut year in, year out. I guess now all he can do is wait for the vitriol to come in, see if more people approve or disapprove. And although my opinion obviously doesn't matter when it comes to the direction of the magazine, I'm pretty curious as well. So lets take a gander.

In this issue:

Letters: Michael Selinker sends in a bunch of revisions for Death of an Arch-Mage. Kim takes this fairly well, considering. I'm sure this didn't ruin the adventure for many people, since this is only a month later, and it takes time to finish off adventures and move onto the next one.
Dearie dearie me. The house in the frozen lands also gets a load of errata. More fixing needed. Oh, the horrors of being an editor on a monthly publication.
Some mathematical corrections about the volume of water. Tripped up by the basics again. Talk about calling attention to your mistakes.

The forum: James A Yates thinks that extremely big and strong people should be able to wield giant sized weapons, albeit maybe at a penalty. It's cool imagery, so yeah, I mostly agree with you there.
Margaret M Foy thinks that if TSR are going to be all edgy about putting christianity into D&D, they should show just as much respect to other religions as well. If they do that, the only pantheons they'll have are entirely self-made ones. Do you really want that? Definitely a case of can't please everyone.  
Thomas M Kane disagrees with some of the corrections about radioactivity. According to his textbooks, his numbers are mostly right. Ahh, science. Remember, science is a method of thinking and acting, not a fixed set of facts. If you're just parroting what someone else says without testing it, you're not being very scientific.
Darcy Stratton is another person deeply annoyed by the sexism inherent in the AD&D game. These strength limits have knock-on effects on classes acessable and maximum level, especially to demihumans. (Why the hell are gnomes and dwarves even more dimorphic than humans? Realism is not a good justification there.) This degree of bigotry is unacceptable in my escapism! Amazing just how much of a deal a few points difference becomes when it's personal. Fraid you'll have to wait another 3 years for the new edition to fix that. Or play BD&D. They've never been sexist over there.

Dawn of a new age: Welcome to a new era. We've already seen a few of the new changes, but here Kim really talks about what he's up too. The people have spoken, and he's done his best to sort out the signal from the noise. Of course, one of the things they've spoken most clearly on is that there's too much sci-fi in Dragon. Buncha philistines. :shakes head: So the Ares section is gone, and we've cut our intended amount of sci-fi per issue in half. Hopefully that'll strike a balance between the people who like it, and the people who would rather see it eliminated entirely. Computer gaming is of course, on the up, and they intend to keep track of that, which I have no objection too at all. The trickier question, is of course, how they recapture the magic of the old issues, whatever the hell that was. The decision they've come to is to stop worrying so much about making sense and getting everything perfectly lined up, and publish articles more on the basis of them being interesting than if they have solid rules. That sounds like it has the potential to go oh so very wrong, and bring in a new glut of overpowered, poorly thought out optional stuff. Set your quality control filters to defcon 2. This does not look promising. I said you could have phrased your questions better.

Dinosaurs get another feature on them. This is one of those things that turns up again and again. They're really trying to go for a definitive take this time, with an epic 18 page article that hopefully will keep people satisfied at least until the next edition comes around. Taking a quite scientific approach to the subject this time, instead of listing tons of discrete species, they decide to give one set of basic stats for each genera, and then show you how to scale things up and down for a whole bunch of variants to challenge groups of various power levels with. Aetosaurs, Anklyosaurs, Carnosaurs, Ceratopsians, Giant sea turtles, Coelurosaurs, Crocodilians, Cynodonts, Deinonychusaurs, Dicynodont, Ichthyosaurs, Labyrinthodonts, Moasaurs, Nothosaurs, Ornithomimosaurs, Ormothpods, Phytosaurs, Placodonts, Pleiosaurs, Pliosaurs, Prosauropods, Proterosucians, Pseudosucians, Pterosaurs, Rhynchosaurs, Sauropods, Scelidosaurs and Stegosaurs. Whew. That ought to keep you going for quite some time, especially if you remember to include lots of variants on each body type as actually existed back then. It includes plenty of advice on how to run a game where dinosaurs feature, either tangentally, or playing a big part, along with lost world areas full of flora from their era as well. A very comprehensive article, that is both well researched, and keeps one eye firmly on making sure you produce a playable game with this stuff instead of getting bogged down in historical detail. While not quite as good as most of the planar articles in sheer epicness and imagination, it's just as good in terms of opening up a milieu further for play, and is in very much the same spirit. Which Is something I do like. Other eras and areas of the world can be almost as alien as other universes, and you can have fantastic adventures while barely traveling in a conventional sense. A very solid article indeed.

Battletech! Pilot your own mech! Hello to another fun game.

Revenge of the nobodies: Now here's a good demonstration of their desire to tackle more quirky topics. Commoners may seem innocuous, but you ignore them at your peril, for they provide much of the infrastructure that you depend on, regardless of level, (unless you're a live off nature type like druids and rangers) and slaughtering them will not benefit you in the long run, even if you have the power. So we have lots of demonstrations of how and why the peasants might become revolting. Many of them are incredibly funny, while also making a twisted kind of sense when you apply proper logic and knowledge of human nature to the fantastic elements of the setting. I can certainly picture tedious 'elf and safety people trying to force all the halflings to wear shoes, and the resulting backlash; and we've already had one examination of the support industry spell components can build up last issue. Disrupting parts of the setting that people have previously taken for granted is always interesting, if sometimes rather frustrating, and it does make a good learning experience. A deserved classic, that I fully intend to steal from when I get the chance.

The role of computers: Hmm. For their second column, the Lesser's tackle one of the great old games of yore. Rogue. A game that's so distinctive, it has an entire subgenre named after it. Create a character, and then venture into a randomly generated (and exceedingly brutal) dungeon. Explore and fight your way down to the bottom level to find the macguffin. Most games would stop there. But no, you then have to fight your way back up again, facing even tougher enemies along the way. You can save the game and stop for a rest, but if you die, it automatically wipes your slot, and you have to start from 1st level, in an all new dungeon where your previous knowledge of the routes and object positioning is useless. It's a very direct analogue of your old skool dungeoncrawling experience, encouraging extreme caution and clever tactical use of items rather than running in swinging if you want to survive and win. With it's tremendous challenge and huge amount of replayability, it, and games based off it such as nethack, still enjoy a small but highly devoted fanbase today. This is a topic I'm very pleased to see them cover, as while it may not actually involve roleplaying, it's a very close relation of RPG's, and has plenty of relevance to gamers. It's a great example of how both computer games and RPG's have become far more forgiving over the years, with way less permanent death and having to start from the beginning if you lose. If they keep up with this kind of stuff, then I'm definitely going to enjoy their new direction.

Cloaked in magic: Not everything has changed around here, however. Yes, its another one of those articles where Elminster elaborates on a particular class of magical items, giving us a whole load of interesting variants to play with. After all, why mess with a winning formula? So here's 9 cloaks, all of which are pretty damn handy.
The cloak of battle traps your opponent's weapons, allowing you to cut them down unopposed.
The cloak of comfort protects you from the weather, and even magical heat and cold based attacks.
The Cloak of fangs is a single use device which allows you to suicide in style, taking out everyone around you.
The cloak of many colors is the inspiration for a terrible terrible musical.
The cloak of reflection reflects certain spells, ruining attackers days.
The cloak of stars allows you to unleash powerful spells stored in it's threads, but unpredictably, as it's hard to tell which star corresponds to which power.
The cloak of survival isn't as impressive as the ring of the same name, but as it never runs out of charges, that's not such a terrible deal. 10 minutes survival in space is still a lot better than nothing.
The cloak of symbiotic protection is one of Ed's delightfully quirky creations. It may be a living organism itself, and in return for a slight drain on your HP, it also protects you from fungal infestations, disease, and most critically, the various oozes, slimes and molds that can so ruin your day without a proper battle in old skool dungeons. This may be a nuisance, or incredibly useful, depending on your DM.
The cloak of the shield allows you to generate a protective wall of force around you.  It can also be used actively as a telekinetic object, and definitely rewards inventiveness.
While these aren't as powerful as say, his magical swords, Ed has once again managed to produce items that are a cut above the rest in terms of both descriptive detail, and inventiveness of powers. As ever, it'll be a real choice as to which one to wear if you have several, as they are all useful, albeit in different situations. Better spoiled for choice than having an obvious optimal one that makes any other build look stupid from a metagame perspective though.

Dragon Issue 112: August 1986

part 2/3

Armor, piece by piece: And the run of really cool articles comes to an end, with a little one which introduces a rather complicated new system for hit locations, and the amount different types of armour protect you on different parts of your body. While not a terrible idea, implementing this will add 2 extra rolls to every single attack in combat. I really have no desire for the amount of slowdown that would cause. Very much a filler article.

TSR previews is the wrong way round again. Get your act together! Anyway, next month sees the release of the compiled version of the GDQ module series. Follow on from T1-4 and A1-4 to make the ultimate AD&D adventure path, taking you from 1st level to the mid-teens, and challenging a god. Woo. What will they do for an encore? I'll tell you one thing, it won't be I9: Day of Al'Akbar. You'll already be way too high level for the tale of this legendary artifact.
On the fiction side, Dragonlance finishes it's second trilogy, with Test of the Twins. Looks like going to the abyss is currently the cool thing for big heroes to do. Question is, how will they get out? We shall see.
Marvel super heroes gets a pair of gamebooks from our husband and wife team. Jeff Grubb gives us The amazing spider-man in City in Darkness, while Kate Novak delivers Captain America in Rockets Red Glare. Talk about keeping it in the family.
Zeb Cook continues to push Oriental Adventures with a one-on-one gamebook set there. Warlords features the battle between the usurper of the throne, and it's rightful heir. Who will triumph in your game?
Gamma world gets it's first module in ages. GW6: Alpha factor. The start of an epic series in which you quest to restore civilization. Will it all get published, or will the game peter out again before they get it done? Don't try and make an epic if you don't have the budget.
And finally, we have a very intriguing development. Steve Jackson (the american one) is collaborating with TSR to bring you Battle Road, a solo Car Wars gamebook. I never expected that. Was it any good? Did it help expand their fanbase?

The ultimate article index is this month's centerpiece, the last time they would attempt to fit in details on everything they've done. As it eats up 20 pages of extra small type, you can understand why. There comes a point where you can't keep looking back, and holding on to everything you've ever done; but have to move on, and this definitely seems like theirs. This is also the perfect time for me to look over the first 10 and a bit years of the magazine, and reminisce about the bits that most caught my attention. (well, given how few articles this issue has by comparison with their recent ones, this'd be a rather short review if I didn't. )

A is for alignment. We've seen it go from the three categories, to 5, to 9, with a couple of odd and amusing variants, plus a whole load of articles and flamewars over the years. It's form is one of the things that makes D&D unique, and separates it from both reality and most fiction. There are plenty of different ways it can be used, but just as often, people have decided it wasn't worth the hassle and pretty much ignored it in their games. That's the advantage and drawback of vaguely defined, sweeping systems. Everyone will see something different in their own image.

B is for Boot Hill. One of their first other games, this got a moderate amount of coverage in early issues, but like so many things, wound up fading away unheralded as the sales couldn't compete with D&D.  It really should have come out a decade or two earlier, as Westerns were already in decline by the late 70's. At least they tried. It's not their fault D&D outsold everything else they did by several factors.  

C is for Campaigns. One of the big ways in which D&D has already evolved during the course of the magazine is a much greater emphasis on building a detailed world. People like Katharine Kerr and Lew Pulsipher have driven this cause forward over the last few years, with advice both interesting and dull on building people and places, and weaving them into a coherent universe. We've also had stuff on proper DM'ing, including rather too much on how to depower or reset a game that's got out of hand. This is one topic that isn't going away any time.

D is of course for Dragon. Every year we get at least one article on them. Some are good, some are bad, and some are mediocre. But the important thing is that the namesake of both the game and the magazine remains one of their most fleshed out monsters, with tons of variants usable in all sorts of rules, suitable for any campaign. From rampaging monster to sage to urbane loan shark to embodiment of the land, they can do all sorts of things. Like alignment, without them, you aren't really playing D&D.

E is for Ed Greenwood and Elminster.  By a big margin both their most prolific and capable all round writer. By coincidence, It's also for Ecology. Fitting, really, as he's produced some of our most kick-ass ecologies, and Elminster has participated in some of them. Long may he contribute to the magazine.

F is for From the Sorcerer's scroll. Gary's regular column in which he pontificated on whatever came to mind. New rules, news, reviews, vitriol. All have been thrown in and stirred together to produce a fascinating, if not always palatable stew for us to consume. He always had a rather different writing style to everyone else, but somehow it worked. Genius, madness, or both? Whichever, he created an entire new genre of games and took it to multimillion sale success within a decade, so he must have been doing something right. And his contributions to the magazine allowed us to see his ideas raw, as he came up with them. Do you only want to see people's ideas once they've gone through layers of redrafting, editing, polishing and committee input? You're missing out on a lot if you do.

G is for Gods. One of the biggest sources of new crunch and fluff has been articles on deities. From the seemingly endless followups to G:DG&H introducing new real world pantheons, to Len's Suel pantheon stuff which also developed the idea of cleric powers being differentiated by the god they serve. The cosmic beings of your universe are an important part of it, especially when 1/4 of your PC's are supposed to get their powers from serving one. Not defining them properly will result in a shallow setting.

H is for Hell. One of this magazine's and Ed Greenwood's shining moments are the three epic articles he did on the nine hells. Between them, we have nearly 50 pages of creatures, places and ideas, all brilliantly constructed and evocatively written. Not strictly judeo-christian, but still drawing heavily on that mythos, this is a great place to adventure. You can play it as the ultimate hack and slash dungeon, world spanning conspiracy horror, or dangerous high stakes political negotiations. Whichever way, it's awesome with an extra helping of awesomesauce on top.

I is for Imagination. As in use your own, goddamnit! The number of letters they have to deal with from people quibbling over the official ruling on stupid details must drive them mad. Canon is not important. The game is yours to twist and add to as you see fit. If you want prepackaged entertainment to simply consume, go to another hobby.

J is for Jesters. The mascot and ringleader for their yearly dose of april mischief.  Because having a sense of humour is important. The real world is full of ridiculous things, (look down your own trousers if you doubt me for a second. ) and if you're all serious, all the time, people wind up ignoring you. By injecting strange and sometimes silly elements into an overall serious product, you massively increase it's appeal, making it more likely to be paid attention too, and eventually taken seriously, ironically. They might have very different writing styles, but one of the reasons both Gary and Ed are so successful is because they are often rather witty and amusing, and sometimes silly.

K is for Kender. An excellent demonstration of my previous point. Dragonlance's cheese factor has always been a bit too high for me to digest. ( Although I did try back in the day. To my eternal shame, I made my highest set of stats ever rolled legitimately with method I a Kender Ranger/Bard. I still have the character sheet.) but plenty of people have eaten it up, and the world still has a decent fanbase. Honorable mention also goes to the Kzinti, who've also got a surprising amount of airtime in the magazine. I have no objection at all to Larry Niven's stuff showing up here, so those were welcome cameos.

L is for Leonard Lakofka and Leomund's tiny hut. Of all the regular contributors to the magazine, he's been the one I've disagreed with most frequently and consistently. He has managed to produce some cool stuff, such as the elemental planes stuff, incremental saves, and of course, Carnivorous flying squirrels , but on the whole, I haven't enjoyed reading stuff written by him. What does this say about me? What does this say about him? Damned if I can figure it out.

M is for module. We've seen plenty of them in the magazine, but that's a thing of the past. Still, we have more than enough to take you from starting level to early teens and still have some choices of route. And that's not even counting the non D&D ones. I look forward to trying some of them out. Honorable mention also goes to Minarian Legends. Divine Right became the wargame that got the most consistent coverage in the magazine, with both rules variants, and a richly detailed setting built up for it over a couple of years. It really would be a great candidate for a revival or licensing as a setting to other media.

Dragon Issue 112: August 1986

part 3/3

N is for Nerf. Putting stuff back in pandoras box once you've taken them out is always a tricky business. In another marvelously appropriate coincidence it's also for ninja. One of the classes introduced in the magazine that most needed a little nerfing. The mysterious orient is always a good excuse for people to sneak in a little power creep.

O is for Oriental, in another incidence of one thought leading appropriately to the next. The love of eastern stuff did not start with anime, or even kung fu movies. Forget not Fu Manchu and the many pulp stores that featured mysterious characters from the east, and all the, erm, fun our ancestors got up to and wrote about in colonial times. While we have seen a few articles, this is a rich seam for mining that they can still do a lot more on in this magazine.

P is for Psionics. While generally neglected, it does hold the distinction of getting the themed issue with the most articles devoted to it's topic. Honorable mention also goes to polearms, which have got less attention than the flak they get would credit. Sure Gary was interested in them, but there's plenty of things that he was interested in more. Just because other games neglect them, does not make D&D weird.

Q is for Quasi-elemental planes. One of the very interesting things for me has been seeing how the planes have gradually evolved and built up over the years in the magazine. Along with alignment, this is where the normally fairly vague pseudomedieval setting of AD&D becomes very specific and unique. And while huge swathes of the multiverse still only have a few pages on them, this continues to change and evolve as the years pass. They've already produced several classic articles on the planes, and I look forward to seeing what future issues bring on this matter.

R is for Rehash. We've already had several takes on quite a few topics, and it seems likely that the proportion of reappearing ideas will only increase. So it goes. All stories are from around 7 plots and a dozen character archetypes. Most music is made up of just 12 notes. It's all in how you combine them, and in what order. Boredom is in the mind of the beholder.

S is for Sage advice. While it has yet to reach it's glory days when Skip will reign for what seemed like an eternity, it's already been pretty entertaining reading. I've missed it since it went on hiatus in issue 79. When will it be back? Good question. I'm certainly awaiting that eagerly, so I can get my snark on again.

T is for Traveller. The non TSR owned RPG that's somehow managed to get the most coverage in the magazine, including a couple of specials focussed on it. Interesting how much it pioneered both rules technology, and things like splatbooks that are common products these days. Another game that richly deserves more credit in the history of the magazine, and gaming in general.

U is for Unearthed Arcana. Another case where we got to see a book gradually built up in pieces in the magazine. (and then erratad afterwards in it as well.) A commercial success, but critically very divisive. I suspect we may see further repercussions from it's release in the magazine.

V is for Vampires. They get everywhere, and D&D is no exception, with the biggest selling module ever being a vampire one, and plenty of weird vampire variants showing up in the magazine. Since ravenloft will go on to become a full setting campaign, and making october issues horror focussed becomes more common later, I expect we'll see plenty more. Honorable mention also goes to Valley elves. Of all Gary's more ill-thought out creations, these are probably the most effortlessly mockable, as the filk showed.

W is for witch. Born from a mysterious article that is still uncredited as far as I know, it has since undergone a couple of revisions in the magazine plus appearing in a best of, thanks to demand. It's the closest they've come to putting a different slant on spellcasting. It's also for Wargaming, and it's checkered history in the magazine. Originally, the magazine was formed as part of their efforts to deliberately separate RPG's and wargames, then after Little Wars was merged, they made regular appearances from 79-81, before disappearing again. They tried to get them back in with the Battlesystem, but that failed. Will they try again before giving up for good? Guess there's only one way to find out.

X is for Xochiyaoyotl. This is devoted to all the unpronounceable and ridiculous names that people have come up with over the years. Be they from other cultures, based off bad puns, or simply made up by stringing random syllables together, there's been no shortage of these in the magazine. Much amusement can be derived by mocking them. As I've said before, this may not be entirely a bad thing. It keeps people thinking about your work more than if all the facts were there, understood and accepted without comment.

Y is for Yefar's Magic Mirrors. This is really an opportunity for me to praise all the wonderfully quirky magic items that they've put in the magazine over the years. It's also a commentary on the way certain writers slip stuff from their own personal campaigns into general articles. Ed Greenwood is once again the biggest offender, but plenty of other people have tried it with varying levels of success. As with monsters and modules, there are probably enough to outfit an entire party over a campaign, but it would be a rather odd D&D campaign.

Z is for Zethra. Notable primarily for being one of Ed's few misteps so far, they've obviously stuck in my mind for precisely that reason. This is another case where we don't really have much to choose from, so that's the best I can come up with for this letter.

Dire invasion: Enough reminiscing. Onward. As Kim promised, though the Ares section is gone, they're still putting the stuff that would have gone in it in about the same place. Jeff is busy this month, so he cedes the Marvel contribution to William Tracey, who has decided to tackle Rom and the spaceknights of Galador. Earth was being infiltrated by yet another shapeshifting alien race, and it fell to him to deal with them, having been sworn to combat them wherever they may rear their ugly heads. (as if the skrulls weren't bad enough. What happens when the Dire wraiths try and infiltrate the Skrulls and vice versa. Nothing would ever get done with all the quadruple crosses and scooby doo reveals. Anyway, we get stats for Rom, Both Starshines, Cindy Adams, The Dire wraiths, Rocketeers, Hell hounds, and Hybrid. We also get character generation alterations for those of you who want to play a spaceknight yourself. Which is rather more player-useful material than Jeff usually gives us. Nice to see different people putting their own spin on this gameline. One person doing everything is not the way to make a well-rounded universe.

For a fistful of credits: Our final article this month is a star frontiers one. It suffers from the problem of being incompatible with their latest supplement, which is a bit embarrassing. Still, as with UA, not everyone wants to update their campaigns to take account of every new supplement, and they still want crunch. So here's a whole bunch of new equipment to upgrade your characters with, if you have the money. This is pretty useful stuff, so there may be a certain amount of power creep involved. As ever, I am faced with the problem that I can't judge the precise details of the crunch for games I don't have, only steal the underlying ideas. Still, they are pretty good ideas,so that elevates this article from the dull, to the realms of so-so. Still not the best way to finish off the issue, though.

Dragonmirth has plenty of actual dragons in it. Snarf gets to meet a spaceman, and humorous misunderstandings are had yet again. Wormy reveals the dark side of wargaming, and just why it is illegal.

Now this is an amazing issue. As both a closer to the old era, and an introduction to a new one, it succeeds spectacularly, with a real change of tone, overall, from recent issues. It has a whole load of classic articles, and reminds me of lots of the old ones as well. I'm not entirely convinced by their new goals as stated, but if they can keep this up, then they should continue to entertain until their next editorial shift. Lets hope they can get the good articles they need to power the machine with.