Dragon Magazine Issue 166: February 1991

part 4/4


Forum: Christine Wellman contributes a long and fairly amusing letter which touches upon character stereotyping, the alignment system, and the sexual proclivities (or not) of halflings in idiosyncratic manner. This is indeed quite enjoyable to read about. Remember, individuals can have quirks that go against the bulk of their alignment without it tipping them all the way to another one.

Rob Williams talks about finding the optimum challenge level to keep players interested and enjoying the game. It's most fun when adventures are challenging, but the players eventually win, and feel they've actually achieved something. Similarly, resurrection is best used when the death was arbitrary and not the player's fault. If they were genuinely dumb, they should also reap the rewards of that and learn from the experience.

Jeremiah Lynch also talks about how hard he thinks you should make resurrection. Again, tricky, but possible if they really work at it seems to be the standard here.

Craig Hardie complains about the people who are overreliant on using the existing campaign worlds for their RPG's. Whatever happened to your creativity? Even if you do use existing stuff, adapt it, make it your own. Otherwise everyone who's read the book will know all the answers.

Jeremy Bargen thinks that the psychological changes a lich goes through thanks to undeath are more severe than Erik Martella does. I think this is one instance where I'd rather have it vary widely from individual to individual.

Alan Grimes reasserts his points against Dan Howarth's criticism. Computers are no-where near as good as real DM's for roleplaying against. So there. I suspect you may be talking at each other, rather than too.

Steven Zamboni picks holes in the astral taxi service in issue 159. Despite it's power, there are some quite substantial holes in their defenses, and githyanki are scary fast on the astral anyway, able to hit and run to wear them down quite effectively. And then there's the moral issue of using harvested brains as slaves to power your items. Even if they are evil, that isn't going to endear you to anyone. Hmm. Now I want to run actual combat simulations, see just how those ships actually fare against the various high level challenges mentioned. It'll definitely be interesting if this one is responded too by the original author.


The navy wants You!: Looks like they're giving Top Secret some support in addition to all the sci-fi stuff this month. As the title indicates, this is about the navy's own espionage division. They've already given the army plenty of attention, so this only requires a few pages of adaptions, new skills, and a whole bunch of tables giving info on the various career paths. This seems very much like the Traveller articles that opened up a new job in terms of feel, which adds a bit of pleasing familiarity to it. Plus it looks like it has quite a bit of actual real world info. So overall, another pretty good article.


Everyone's a critic in dragonmirth. Except maybe the rust monster. Ogrek moves in with Yamara. And brings all his stuff. Twilight empire gives us some hot spring stylee fanservice.


Through the looking glass: A little less emphasis on the legal troubles with lead this month, and a bit more on this year's conventions. Seems a bit early to start, but then again, conventions actually happen all year round, not just the summer. And you know what tickets are like for selling out way before the event. Act now, before it's too late! The same applies for the legal campaigning. It's more likely to turn out alright if you take personal steps than if you just trust other people will get round to it. In fact, that's definitely useful advice for any endeavour. Against laziness and apathy, even the gods themselves struggle in vain, while those who exploit the apathy of other really rake it in.

Anyway, this month's reviews continue the spirit of fun that pervades this issue. A knight facing the wrath of a princess for trying to kill her dragon. A rabbit - OF DOOOOOOM!!!!! A pair of dragons fighting, based on the art of Denis Beauvais from this very magazine. A wizard talking to a hobbit. An Armoured Personnel Carrier. A big muscly monster from Talislanta, which seems pretty adaptable for any ogre type humanoid for other systems. And finally, a ton of ships from GHQ, which inspires Robert to launch into a couple of pages of discourse on the real life history of each ship, and give them all 5 star ratings. This has obviously hit an area of personal interest for him. He does seem to have a few surprises in his bag still.


The best issue of the decade so far, with highly readable articles, lots of non D&D stuff, and a far higher than usual sense of fun in general. It was so easy to review, it feels like it was over way too soon, which is definitely unusual in this era of large page counts. Let's hope the next one isn't an agonizing crawl to make up for it.

Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991

part 1/4


116 pages. Out into the freezing wilderness again. Dungeon, wilderness and city, the great trifecta of adventuring. Ok, so they tack on weird otherdimensional stuff as well, but those are the ones that must be returned to again and again, to create a satisfying set of adventure choices. We're well past the point where I can expect regular innovations, so once again, I'll just have to wonder if this one'll have some new spins and cool ideas to add to our repertoire.

In this issue:


Letters: A rather snarky letter to Skip quibbling about Scale and Chain mail. Skip gives an equally snarky response, as befits the badass sage who puts the pages in the mages.

Another letter giving a bit of random information on something that they mentioned. This is the kind of thing googling deals with in a matter of seconds these days. Not so easy back then.

Two letters about submitting stuff to them. Roger gives them the usual freelancers spiel about getting the proper paperwork. You can't just give them your campaign world out of the blue and expect them to jizz themselves with excitement and publish it for you in perpetuity. Even if you were that good and prolific a writer, there are procedures that must be followed. They do have to crush the dreams of another wave of enthusiastic young wannabes with less skill than they think on a regular basis here.


Editorial: Roger reminisces about his army days again. There were many long, happy campaigns had with his fellow soldiers. But there was always the distinct possibility of them coming to a sudden end when real life intrudes, and people are posted to different locations, or even killed in action. But you should still stay in touch. It can be lonely out there, especially when no-one knows where you are or what you're doing. A good reminder that in reality, killing people and taking their stuff (because let's not forget the importance of oil in the Iraq wars ) is a nasty business, with long periods of tedium followed by quick periods of terror and pain. We engage in these things in our imagination because doing them in reality is not feasible or desirable. ( Well, feasable anyway. Muahahahahaha!!!!! Ahem. ) PS: Support your troops! Yeah, this falls a little into moralizing lecture territory, which I'm not very keen on venturing too. But it does raise a lot of interesting and pertinent points. Roger's still a pretty good writer. If only he had time to produce more articles, instead of having to edit everyone else's and still write this.


See the pomarj and die: Hmm. A Greyhawk article? Not often you see those in here. This is an interesting development. Welcome to another of AD&D's wild frontiers. Full of fragmented human communities, beset by marauding humanoids, and of course, endangered by the ur-slavers of D&D mythology, as it's the canon location of modules A1-4. It'll take more than wild Bill Hickok to pacify this region. A mini supplement that goes into a surprising amount of demographic detail, and gives you plenty of adventure hooks that should keep players busy throughout the low/mid levels, but'll probably run out by the time we get to name levels (at which point you'll probably have made the info here pretty inaccurate. ) It could have been a good deal longer, possibly even a full supplement, but this is a pretty decent starter. Enjoy your killing and politicking.


Back to the age of mammals: The Cenozoic gets another article on it. Only 2 + 1/2 years since the last one too. Fortunately, since that was also on Roger's watch, and this is by the same author as well, there is no overlap whatsoever. Reality is pretty damn big, and you could easily fill entire books talking about this era. So here's 11 more creatures to squeeze into your campaign. Agriotherium, Amphicymon, Anancus, Andrewsarchus, (I'll bet that's named after someone specific) Giant humpless Camels, Dwarf Elephants, (so cute! I want one. ) Giant Hippos, Megalania, Metridiocherus, Pelorovis and Sarkastodon. (hee) Plus a few more that don't get full stats, being simply adjusted versions of existing creatures. Most are clearly related to modern day creatures, only bigger and with various miscellaneous quirks. The individual descriptions aren't that long, but you should know where to look if you want more ecological info. And so this milieu grows even more inviting to me. Since lost world regions are such a popular adventure location, I shall definitely have to create one.


The ecology of the su-monster: Another excuse to ensure everyone knows about a newly updated monster here, including a reprint of it's stats. In this case, it's also a means of indirectly promoting the newly released Complete Psionics handbook. Gotta collect 'em all! That bit of suspicion aside, it's not a bad ecology in it's own right, spinning a rather grim tale of how creatures like this can be a threat to an entire community. Sometimes you don't need dozens of varieties of monster to make an interesting adventure, just one being numerous, devious and intractable. When they can also have various selected powers that differ from one individual to another, they can be pretty versatile even without class abilities. A strong revaluation of an underused creature. Tempting.


The dragon's bestiary decides to give us some more problematic plants to make your outdoor adventures a little more dangerous. Like underwater stuff, this isn't too common an option for writers, but there's tons of material to draw upon, so it still has plenty of room for adding surprising creations to your game.

Giant bladderwort pretends to be solid ground in marshy terrain, and then sucks you gloopily under for a good digestin'.  Swamps are already one of the least glamourous locations for adventurers to tromp through. Stuff like this is why I try and get flying powers ASAP.

Giant butterwort also follow the ambush predator route. They'll stick to you like a fly in amber and wrap you up in their loving tendrils. They get nearly everywhere if you don't clear them out as well. Plants can grow surprisingly fast, remember.

Giant rainbow plants dazzle you with their pretty colours and lure you in, before dropping the act and suffocating you with their sticky leaves. Another one that probably has less ferocious relatives in real jungles.

Giant waterwheel plants are another way of making players deeply paranoid of going wading. They'll lurk below the water and digest you leg first.

Sword Grass is pretty self-explanatory. You try and step on it, it slices you to ribbons and uses your corpse to enrich it's soil. They're not hard to mow down, but will regrow unless you dig up the whole damn root system. Which means like goblinoids, they can keep showing up to challenge low level adventurers again and again.

Clubthorn are mobile holly bushes that'll beat you to a pulp. Since normal holly can do enough pain on it's own, that seems pretty decent grounds for paranoia. Something blackberry related would be even more tempting to lure us into a false sense of security.

Bloodflowers put you to sleep, and then drain you dry slowly. Now there's a pretty common archetype. Just the thing to be growing in a vampire's garden.

Helborn seem rather inspired by the Little Shop of Horrors, being sentient, semimobile creatures that can grow big enough to swallow a person, and have quite uncanny persuasive powers. Like Audrey II, they may try and deal with you, but that just puts you one lapse in feeding schedule away from being next on the menu. Still, anything intelligent can be played with variety, and I find the thought of using one of these as a crime lord and slave trader quite appealing. I can do a quite good impersonation of their signature line, and my players are the sort to appreciate that, so look out world. :devil: This lot definitely make good additions to your random encounter tables for various terrains.

Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991

part 2/4


Curses are Divine: Or more encouragement for your DM to be a sadistic, ironic, arbitrary bastard. Does anyone really need encouraging for that?! Anyway, this is for those of you who'd like to put a bit of deific intervention in when your players loot, pillage, desecrate and slaughter the stuff of the wrong god, but aren't sure how to go about it. Chances of the god noticing and deciding to intervene in response to various actions, and a whole bunch of sample punishments. Under this one, it's a damn good idea to pick a team and stick with it, because gods generally don't mess with other god's sheep directly, but a free agent is free to be smitten from all sides. And a betrayer is trusted by no-one. The fantasy mafia in the sky are watching, and treading on the wrong turf without paying your dues may be ignored most of the time, but when response comes, it will be horribly disproportionate. One to be used with caution, depending on your assumptions about the nature of gods, their degree of omniscience, range of attention, degree of busyness and amount they care about their worshippers. Choice is yours, blah blah blah. Can't get up much passion for that.


TSR Previews: The forgotten realms is double billing yet again. LC3: Nightwatch in the living city sees Ravens Bluff go mainstream. (I don't remember seeing LC 1 or 2 advertised here) Now you don't have to be part of the RPGA to do some heroic acts around here. Far to the west, Doug Niles finishes the Maztica Trilogy with Feathered Dragon. Didn't we just find one of those in the hollow world? Man, this stuff gets tricky to keep straight.

Greyhawk starts something a little bigger than a trilogy this year. WGS1: Five shall be one. Carl Sargent sends you on a macguffin hunt to retrieve a series of magical blades. This one any good?

Dragonlance also seems to have realised people are getting tired of trilogies. Instead, they're starting a sextet. The meetings series sees us go right back, prequeling the prequels, to when the heroes of the lance first met. Man, they're really milking the past in this setting. Next thing, we'll be having whole books on their childhoods. Flint, Tanis, and Laurana are first up, in Kindred Spirits.

Spelljammer gets a second Monstrous compendium appendix, MC9. There's a lot of weird stuff up there. Not that they're spoiling what they are exactly. This should be fun.

Lankhmar has a second anthology of short adventures. LNA3: Prince of Lankhmar. Set in the city itself, it sounds as if there may be interconnections between them. Again, could be fun.

And our standalone book this month is Sorcerer's Stone by L. Dean James. Not a very edifying title, but the synopsis doesn't seem too bad, if a bit stereotypical. Just another tiny piece of the endless wash of product these days.


Arcane lore: Yay for problemsolving! A few months ago, it was pointed out that Necromancers have some serious problems with spell selection at low level. Their favoured school, while useful, is not nearly as well exploited as it should be. So this is damn helpful article, with quite a few spells that would make it into future sourcebooks. (in particular, I think all of them were in the Complete Necromancer's Handbook. ) I quite approve.

Animate Dead Animals is ridiculously effective for it's level. Unless you need them to have hands, I'm not sure why anyone bothers with regular skeletons & zombies if they have this.

Spectral Ears & Eyes are cut-price versions of Clairvoyance and audience, since you need an undead creature to share the senses of. Spectral voice lets you speak through your minions, as well which is basically a crap version of ventriloquism. Still, remote control of your minions is not to be sneezed at, especially at 1st level. If you use these wisely, maybe you'll survive your first adventurer encounters and get to be a proper evil overlord.

Skeletal Hands also gives you useful remote manipulation abilities. Not hugely useful in combat, this'll give a wizard who's to lazy to get up from sitting in front of the crystal ball a decent alternative to unseen servant. (in case they can't access that)

Bone Knit lets you heal skeletons, or even give them regeneration. Now there's a visual that always makes players worry. Just how much effort are these undead going to take to put down? Sometimes, in the movies, no amount of hacking'll do the job. Kill it with fire or drop them in a pit instead.

Ghastly Hands lets you paralyze things with touch like a Ghast. This feels very much like a way of compensating for the fact that Hold Person is an Enchantment. If you have no hammer, then maybe a screwdriver will serve if you use a little cleverness.

Skull Trap is like Fire Trap, only more obvious, and using negative energy rather than fire. Another reason you should be very wary of any skulls just left lying around a dungeon. How many spells need a good skull to work?

Transmute Bone to Steel doesn't actually do that, just makes it as tough as, like those wood/iron transmutation spells druids got. This is fairly high level for a moderate buff to your undead minions. Still, it is reversible, which is exceedingly good for dealing with Iron Golems.

Undead Servants makes your rotting minions somewhat intelligent and programmable with complex instructions. This is pretty weak for it's level, and may actually be a nerf in disguise, since animate dead never strictly defined how much memory for complex instructions undead have in the first place. Since the low level ones are quite powerful for their level, this does make me wonder a bit. We really could do with better power benchmarks for spell levels than highly subjective eyeballing.

Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991

part 3/4


The voyage of the princess ark: It's psychodrama time as Haldmar finishes his incantation, and upgrades the Ark. He meets Berylith, the spirit of the dragon that would be bonded to the Ark, and journeys through the dimension of nightmares with her. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew have to fend off spectral hounds. Once again, it ends on a cliffhanger as the Ark's magic is complete, but it still needs to restructure itself. What will it's new form look like?

We also get another 4 of the ark's crewmen statted up this month. Ashari Sunlil, a navigator. Ramissur Zumrulim, a boltman. Tarias of Arogansana, a midshipman. And Leo of Le Nerviens, an irritating gnome. (Do they give tax breaks for having a comic relief sidekick in Mystara?) They haven't played particularly important parts in the story so far, but maybe they will now.

Not a very interesting installment this month, despite the dramatics. Hopefully it'll pick up again, as this feels a bit formulaic. Such is the problem with episodic pulp produced to a deadline. Sometimes the magic just isn't going to be there.


The role of computers: Tunnels & Trolls shows that other RPG's are getting computer conversions as well. The sound and visuals aren't that great, but it still gets a 5 star rating. They give us a review full of hints, revealing in the process that it has quite a bit of depth in terms of character generation and roleplaying, with knowing languages playing an important part of the game. It looks like another game where you can pull a whole bunch of system exploits to get the most out of your characters. I wonder if we'll be seeing this one further spoiled in the clues system.

Bettletech: The Crescent Hawks Revenge also lets the conversions flow, even though it draws more upon the wargame side than the RPG add-ons. You can control a whole squad, and adjust the speed to allow yourself time to give all the orders needed. Once again, it seems pretty decent, if not as open ended as the T&T game.

Hard Nova is another big, openended adventure, this time a sci-fi one where you have a whole bunch of playstyles, going from ship flying to indoor puzzles and shooting, with a good bit of roleplaying thrown in. Another one where you have plenty of choices on how to play the game, and actually get some control on what you say to people.

Stellar 7 is somewhat less complex, but still a good bit of sci-fi fun. Pilot a hyperadvanced tank, and blow stuff to bits. Now with massively improved 3D graphics. Well, not brilliant, but they're getting there.

We also get to enjoy the Beastie Awards for the last year, maybe a little late. No great board-sweepers this time round, with different winners for each game system,  and no overlaps in genre categorizations either. Unsurprisingly, Ultima VI and Might of Magic II score high, along with other RPG's. Nothing particularly leaps out at me here.


Sage advice: Does being immune to nonmagical attacks make you immune to falling (No. The earth is an infinite HD monster, and can therefore hurt things requiring up to +4 to hit. )

Can a vorpal weapon sever a thing that's too tall for you to reach the neck of (Recycled question. Skip is going through hard times right now. Skip does not need this. It's the sagely equivalent of being parked outside someone's house all day watching for signs that their wife is being unfaithful)

Can I Charm a shambling mound and then use lightning bolts to give it hundreds of extra HD ( Yes, but the charm will wear off. And given it's new saving throws, you'll have a very hard time recharming it. Better be prepared for a quick exit.)

Do specialist wizards lose their speciality if they suffer ability drain (once again, no! God, this sucks )

Can conjurers cast evocations and lesser divinations ( And this is why skip is in the doghouse. Skip has failed to consider the implications of preventing wizards from using lesser divinations. So Skip is going to make a stupid ruling that Skip will later have to retract. )

How can I find a gaming club (Noticeboards. Also, recruit your friends. It's the best way to grow the hobby. Use the new D&D Basic set. :teeth ting: )


Fiction: Dragon's blood by Bryan Haught. One of the shortest pieces we've had in a while, this is one of those ones that is basically just a lead-up to a punchline. A bit insubstantial really, this is amusing the first time, but doesn't really hold up to repeated reading. Given the way it's formatted, this definitely feels like a filler piece picked out of the slush pile because they had a couple of pages not quite filled at crunch time. Mehness.


Just give me money!: Here we go again, with the deconstruction of the D&D currency system. This time with extra historical info. Weights are ridiculous, training costs exorbitant, and the whole thing is a bit of a headache. Dividing everything by 10 for everyday purposes has quite substantial benefits in practical terms. And of course, there's all the usual issues with protectionism, moneychangers, taxes, supply and demand causing fluctuations in value, it's all competent, aware of the previous articles and builds upon them, and very very tiresome. The kind of thing I really am not keen on dealing with in reality, and so will probably not bother to use unless I get an economics wonk as a player who actively pursues this stuff and makes it a plot issue. We will have to continue suspending our disbelief so the system doesn't come crashing down around us. (hey, maybe it's not so different from real economics after all)


Milestones and free miles: Oooh. A competition. Shiny. To go to england and attend a convention? Of no use to me, even if this wasn't years out of date. Another piece that's barely a footnote on the massive boot of history.


The marvel-phile: Connecting with the last article, we have some English characters detailed here. Malcom Knight and Thomas Fogg. In typical supers fashion, a scientific accident resulted in them gaining superpowers that just happened to be puns on their names and appropriate to their personalities. One's an ambiguous character who sticks by his own code, while the other is just a slippery slimeball. The idea of supervillains with a scouse accent is somewhat amusing, if a little hard to take seriously. It's very much another average day in the office here as well.

Dragon Magazine Issue 167: March 1991

part 4/4


Forum is rather short this month: Russell Speir quibbles about the damage ratings of crossbows. They ought to do considerably more than longbows. Not particularly interesting.

Bradley Wadle takes up most of the forum, with a rather detailed piece about how incredibly unfair energy draining undead are. It needs to be removed or seriously fixed, so it doesn't mess people up semipermanently even if you win the combat. It is rather a problem, isn't it. It does have to be noted that even the official designers are gradually coming round to that point of view, with most new monsters, even ones that are supposed to be more fearsome like shadow dragons, only draining stuff temporarily and/or allowing saving throws to avoid the effect. Course, it'll still take 18 years and two big reboots before the people who hold this view can completely purge all the existing sadism from the system. Plenty more time for me to relish it until then.


Lords of the warring states: Or giants in the earth visits the orient again. They do have the advantage of a bureaucracy that stretches back thousands of years recording stuff in rather great detail than some folk stories. So let's head back to the warring states, to see what people make good characters. Lu Pu-Wei, a rogue with a heart who went out with style. Impenetrable Ordinance, who virtually epitomises the batshit insane emperor with his vanity projects and searches for immortality. Li Ssu, who by restricting weapons and clamping down on independent thought, probably contributed to the development of martial arts, as well as generally contributing to the civic good. Ching K'o, who tried to assassinate the emperor, failed, but still became a folk hero. And Sun Pin, the dishonoured general who still fought with tactics and style. There are a few illegal bits, as ever, but this is a lot more interestingly presented than most of these columns. Oddly enough, I have no objection to this one.


The game wizards: As they mentioned earlier, Undermountain is one of their big releases this month. It could have been a lot bigger, since it has been worked on and played in since 1975, when Ed first discovered roleplaying, but TSR do have fairly strict product sizes these days. As is often the case, Ed is joined by a character from the Realms to aid in exposition, (this time Laeral, because Elminster is off boning the Simbul ) The reason it remains a deadly dungeon even after all these years is largely thanks to Halaster's persistent efforts at restocking monsters, and designing ever more sadistic traps. (I suspect deepspawn may also be involved. ) He really is providing a tremendously valuable service to aspiring adventurers everywhere, especially since the creatures in there cause surprisingly little bother in Waterdeep itself. As usual, Ed manages to make this far more entertaining than most writers, and somewhat more useful as well, with some advice on how to best use his product. Big chunks of it are left open for you to develop further, but they've provided tools for you to randomly generate stuff for them quickly. It's a great place to incorporate spells and devices from this magazine. And even if you aren't playing in the realms, you can steal a level here, an encounter idea there, and get years of use out of this stuff. It also reinforces another maxim. The best adventures are ones that have been honed through years of actual play, and the best designers are ones who still find the time to play, because if you don't, you may produce stuff that looks pretty, and is mathematically neat, but if you don't learn what's actually fun for the players and works smoothly for DM from personal experience, then it simply won't have that magic. Ravenloft, the Tomb of Horrors, the Temple of Elemental Evil, Ptolus. All went through years of play and development before reaching the form they did in their final mass market release and are better for it. So this is not only a good advert, but useful and interesting in itself. That is very much the way to do it.


The role of books: Never deal with a dragon by Robert N Charette takes us into the world of shadowrun, full of darkness, mystery, and obscenely powerful dragons machinating to advance their agenda. Looks like they've got off to a strong start in this department.

Deryni magic by Katherine Kurtz gets a somewhat negative review for it's odd approach to deconstructing her own novels. There's surprisingly little behind the scenes information, and far too much verbatim quoting from the books. Not hugely insightful.

Heart of valor by L J Smith takes the typical young adult formula of kids learning about magic while also facing mundane problems and combines it with a road trip story. This turns out to be pretty fun, and also full of decent worldbuilding & metaphysics.

The road west by Gary Wright combines adventuring with serious Aaaaangst and psychological study as a serious brooding loner badass tries to get his groove back. Sounds like almost a parody of the stuff that makes Drizzt popular

The shadow gate by Margaret Bail seems to break all the rules of good writing, and yet the reviewer still found himself carrying on reading. So it's like the worst form of literary junk food. Just be thankfull it isn't inexplicably selling millions.

The forge of virtue by Lynn Abbey is a novel based upon the Ultima series. Like far too much gaming fiction, it reads like writing to a formula and making up page count. Even less worth it than the last one.

Lifeline by Kevin J Anderson & Doug Beason gets a surprisingly good review, as a bit of hard sci-fi with serious questions about economics and ecology. A newly established moonbase is cut off from earth, and has to survive on it's wits and experimental technology. His novels do seem to be quite a mixed bag in terms of popularity.  


Dragonmirth has more cynicism and naivette. Yamara has to figure out what to do with her worshippers. It's bad form to let them worship at someone else's church. Twilight empire focusses on the bad guy's camp this time.


Through the looking glass: Robert gets ahead of himself a little, and does some reporting that would probably be more thematic for the april issue. Among the more standard wargames out there, there's also stuff involving toy dinosaurs, (as we saw last issue) stuffed animals, legos, blobs of clay, and whatever else may be lying around your house. And this can actually be more fun too. It's certainly more newbie friendly. And since wargames are a decade or two ahead of RPG's in their product cycle of commercial decline, and the people of this era rather want to change that fact, this isn't that surprising. We'll see this topic revisited a few times in the future.

Anyway, in the actual minis reviews we have: A whole bunch of Talislanta stuff, Gnomekin, a trapsmith, and an engineer. Star wars continues it's strong efforts at encompassing all media with a set of rebel troopers. Stan Johansen Miniatures have a bunch of heavy weaponry for your sci-fi soldiers to equip. I. C. E. are also in a sci-fi mood with two space cruisers. Ral Partha is a little more present, with a set of modern day soldiers. While GHQ give Robert another chance to talk about his interest in historical ships, with minis of the LeSuperbe and the HMS Bellona. Very much business as usual here.


They came from outer space! Spelljammer gets it's own monstrous compendium appendix.

With a strong start, a tedious saggy middle, and a fairly good ending, this is a reasonable issue, with enough useful stuff to justify returning to it again. Seems like they're trying to increase the amount of crunch in the articles again, ensure that we have mechanical support for the various directions we are given to take the game in. Not a bad thing really. Steer the good ship Dragon on to ever more familiar terrain, Roger. Good luck.

Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991

part 1/4


116 pages. Another april, another dose of wackiness. No more keeping it to alternating years, Roger's got the material, and he fully intends to make sure we get it too. With this, birthday issues always being dragon themed, and october ones getting the horror stuff, that means he only has to think up different themes for 9 issues a year. So trust nothing anyone says, check every cushion before you sit down, and do not sniff flowers, or accept when someone tries to high-five you under any circumstances.  You might just get out with your dignity intact. You can trust me of course. Let's go con some sucker out of their money with a rigged card game.


In this issue:


Buy the new D&D basic game! The first in 8 years, and the best version yet! Get lots more newbies into playing. Pwease! Pwetty pwease! They just have to preach to the choir, don't they. Couldn't you at least make it mockable like Khellek & co.


Letters: Roger continues his now semi-annual tradition of posting dumb letters from readers pretty much as they were recieved. Substantial amounts of entertainment for minimal effort. All you need to do is lay them out properly. A relationship question that seems unlikely to end well. Goddamn bad boys :mutter mutter: A custody battle over a baby orc, of all things. A question on what to do with the body of a dead dragon. You ought to know by now that the sky (and the ingenuity of your magic-user) is the limit in this matter. A truly demented letter about using psychic force to attend a space academy for years in half an hour of real time. And a dumb letter involving people who don't have a clue what they're doing. They sure do know how to pick them.


Editorial: So you've been criticizing Roger's editing, saying it's not as good as Kim's used to be. Here, he pulls out all the sadistic stops to show us just how hard editing D&D is, especially now there are hundreds of products out, many of which introduce new creatures, classes and rules that aren't particularly consistent. A whole bunch of questions, most of which are trick ones, and many which require encyclopedic knowledge of the history of D&D publications. It ends with a fakeout, to be concluded next issue. Looks like Roger is bringing his particular brand of whimsy to this section as well. It rather makes me want to pick his brains with a bohemian ear spoon. It's certainly different, anyway. As ever, shaking off the boredom has definite value.


How to role-play in one easy lesson: Or Let's get Wacky!!! Roll on the random name generation table! (I'll take a consonant please Carol ) Play up the demihuman stereotypes! Stab all the other players in the back! Procrastinate and irritate! Metagame at every opportunity! Yup, it's a typical not very useful april fools article to kick things off with. Like the cheating articles of '89, this is more useful as a primer to what NOT to do. I think you can hop, skip and kangaroo jump (or possibly wombat trundle) over this one without regrets.


Merty's manual of magical Merchandise: MMMM. Another lovely collection of humorous items with uncertain usefulness, all tied together with an overarching creation story, and all awesomely abusing alliteration. I remember these from the magical item compendium a few years later, and must confess to a certain degree of amusement. They stuck in my mind quite effectively, as all have their uses, but most have their dangers as well. Let the buyer beware. Muahahahaha.

Merty's Marvelous Marbles let you pull all manner of pranks, and then call them back quickly and conveniently. They will backfire occasionally, but that's a small price to pay for years of fun.

Merty's Mystic Mustard is so hot it lets you breathe fire. And can give you terminal heartburn if you're not careful. Very cartoonish.

Merty's Magnificent Mattress puts you to sleep magically. This does have it's drawback. If there's no-one to wake you, you'll sleep forever. Good thing adventurers usually come in parties, eh?

Merty's Multiplanar Mushrooms let you go ethereal if you eat one. They have an obvious drawback, and a subtly hidden one. Buy in bulk for maximum benefit. (if you have the money)

Merty's Mysterious Mug is perfect for pranksters, but has few practical purposes. A good example of the how to lose friends and influence people principle.

Merty's Masterful Mufflers actually do their job reliably. No sound will get through when wearing them. Now you just need to learn sign language and watch out for monsters sneaking up on you.

Merty's Munificent Matches go fwoosh when lit in quite an alarming fashion. Watch you don't drop them and burn yourself. Not really very magical, is it.

Merty's mmm-mmmm! Muskmelons give you a reusable source of convenient food. Your henchman will be thrilled at how much less he has to carry. Still, don't be surprised if living off nothing but fruit gives you the runs.  

Merty's Miraculous Mistmaker does exactly what it says on the tin. Remember, mist obscures vision for everyone, and lots of monsters are better at dealing with blindness than you.

Merty's Mud Masque lets you disguise yourself by covering yourself with it. This is not as useful as it seems, largely due to it's limitations and short duration.

Merty's Masculine Macho-Musk is a rather counterproductive product, that may be handy in combat, but will not help you get the girls like you think it will. How many spam e-mails have I got about pheromone perfume that'll supposedly make you irresistible. Use the character as a decoy in the chamber of the sci-mutant priestess.

Merty's Musical Menagerie will give you the musical instruments you need, if you're lucky. Finding the right one can be a frustrating experience though. Wearing gloves may help with this.

Merty's Magical Markers let you put invisible signals around a dungeon to aid in navigation. Don't lose the decoder ring, otherwise they'll be pretty pointless.

Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991

part 2/4


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Looks like we have a surplus of suspicious magical items this year, with a second article doing much the same as the last one, only with less style. They must have got a job lot off the back of a lorry, quite possibly courtesy of Bargle & co.

Mirrors of Sophistication give any woman perfect hair - for a dwarf! Now that's just plain mean, like those girdles of gender changing. Beware your hair indeed. Still, at least this one wears off eventually.

Rings of Ice do what they do, albeit a little too well. If you're not actually in serious hot water, keep it in your pocket.

Elixir of additional weaponry is also pretty damn handy - for Drow. Anyone else may have some serious issues with growing additional evil arms.

Elixir of reduction is like a potion of diminution, only permanent and not affecting your stuff. This is obviously a serious issue if you're not expecting it, for there are many creatures that would enjoy eating a tiny naked man lost in a dungeon. All those clothes can stick in your teeth and be a right pain if you don't have hands.

Scroll of Transmutation are another joke which works by playing with expectations. Like rust monsters and energy draining undead, this one will provoke massive amounts of terror in adventurers for all the wrong reasons.

The Orb of distant viewing is probably the dumbest and most meta of all this collection. All it shows are I love Lucy reruns. I am not amused in the slightest. Still, that aside, these two collections have once again improved on the last two years, in that most of the items feel like they could actually have been created by people for a reason, rather than just because the gods of the setting want to watch and laugh as the people who find them suffer. They could be incorporated into a serious game and not ruin it automatically.


Forum: Andrew Cairns gives an interesting motivational speech about what D&D can be, the stories it can tell, the lessons it can impart. If you do it right, it shows the players that working together and learning to understand people is an important part of life. If done wrong, it teaches that casual racism and killing is a quick path to profit. Hmm. Well, its certainly a way of thinking about it.  Since the trend over time has definitely been to making other races playable and comprehensible, I think that your worries aren't substantiated.

Joseph Dineen contributes his own opinion on the impact spellcasters have on warfare, using not just D&D, but WHFRP and Palladium as well. So he suggests some tactics he thinks would work for a city equipped with a decent number of mages in their guards, and expecting likewise from any attackers. I guess WHFB is one of the better systems for trying things like that.

Jules Jones gives a whole bunch of (unofficial) rules clarifications, which look handy for curbing some of the excesses of twinks. (although ducks really shouldn't be able to hover ) Now, if we could only do something about the orientophillia. They're already more powerful than regular characters, you don't need to give them more options.

Scott M McDowell talks about his rather messed up gaming circle and his attempts to get them under control. They seem to be improving, but it's a slow process. Still, it makes for good stories when they pull ridiculous crap.

Jasen Cooper extolls the badassedness of dragons. Blah blah, tactics, excellent senses, should be nearly impossible to defeat. Yeah, we know, we get told so nearly every year. Are the upgrades they got in the edition change not enough for you?

On a similar note, Matt Bonnan wants dinosaurs given the credit they deserve. Our knowledge of them continues to advance, and the idea that they were all stupid, sluggish and ungainly looks increasingly tenuous. They never stopped being cool even so, you know. I suspect this means we'll be seeing another article or two on them in the near future. Issue 112's attempt at definitiveness could satisfy the public appetite for only so long.


Saddam Hussein and George Bush get lampooned in Mid-East Peace. I think that's something we can all get behind.


Role-playing reviews skips the roleplaying bit, and just does reviews, under the pretext of giving us something to do when the DM cancels abruptly. If you can't play the regular game, but a load of people are already there, you need a quick pick-me-up. A bit cheeky, but a very valid consideration.

Dungeon! is TSR's own attempt at stripping down D&D to a competitive multiplayer boardgame. It was actually made right back in the 70's, and got a few mentions in the early magazine before slipping into obscurity. It's been rereleased, but Ken doesn't seem overly enthused about the whole thing. While not bad, it's a bit too simplistic for him, and doesn't have much replay value. There are better competitors around these days.

The great khan game is rather more sophisticated, with Tom Wham's particular sense of humour and naming tendencies strongly noticable. It's probably not for novice players, but the rules do support plenty of depth once unraveled. This shows up the difference between organic and calculated design processes.

Heroquest is of course the game that brought Games Workshop's grim world where chaos is rising to the mainstream market. It's another good example of how to make games visually appealing and incredibly easy to learn without being patronising, and rake in the cash in response. It is a bit simple for Ken, with it's limited advancement options and rather weak enemies, but I guess that's what the Advanced version is for. Still, if you want a gateway drug for young relatives, this very much fits the bill. It also has quite a few supplements, jacking up the challenge and adding new minis. I have quite a few fond memories of this.

Space crusade has quite a few parallels with Heroquest, but is a more sophisticated game, with the blip system and mission objectives adding quite a lot of tactical consideration and replayability to the game. Like Heroquest, it get gets plenty of support in White Dwarf magazine, has great visual presentation, and plays a substantial part in making Games Workshop the juggernaut it has become.

Dungeonquest is a conversion of a swedish game. The theme seems pretty familiar. Get in, get the treasure from the dragon and get out alive. With randomly generated dungeons, it's good for solitaire play, and nicely brutal. He actually prefers it to the more mass market games.

Arkham horror attempts to do for Call of Cthuhu what Dungeon does for D&D. It gets critically acclaimed by ken, but doesn't seem to be able to match these others for commercial success, having just gone out of print. Which is a bit lame, but such is life. Good luck finding it on ebay.


Got all the 7 monstrous compendia released so far? Send off this form to get a rebate. Isn't that nice of us.

Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991

part 3/4


The voyage of the princess ark: The Ark finishes reconfiguring itself this month. However, it takes a whole week of IC time to do it, in which Haldemar and co think they've lost her. So they set off on foot through the jungle, and once again get themselves in deep trouble with the natives. All's well that ends well though, as Berylith saves them. Now if Haldemar can just get over the shock, everything'll be cool again.

The majority of this article is taken up by the new deck plans of the Ark, and their description. And it is both odd in several respects, and very impressive indeed, with a detached levitating section, magical elevators and teleportation circles, personal gravity to allow for spectacular acrobatics without everything inside getting bashed around, cloaking, plenty of weaponry and security measures, all wrapped inside a pretty aesthetically pleasing package. Or in other words, DROOL!! WANT!!! This is the kind of thing that will make you the envy of other adventuring groups, and a quite possibly a target for enemies, but hey, at high levels, you need lots of XP to advance, and suitable dungeons are not always easy to find. Let them challenge you. Then you get to blow them out of the sky in a spectacular arial dogfight, bombard their armies on the ground, root out their infiltrators and assassins, and generally prove just how awesome this thing is. Rock.


The role of computers: Bane of the Cosmic Forge is one of those RPG's where you generate characters from a whole bunch of typical races and classes, and a few quirky ones. The general options have been expanded upon, as is standard with a continuing series, and you should save often as you quest to save the world. The visuals still aren't brilliant, and this is probably what keeps it from getting 5 stars, but  it's still another solid attempt to emulate D&D style gaming.

Powermonger is another of those games where you get to play ruler, build your settlements and armies, and conquer other lands. It also has diplomacy options, and online multiplayer, giving it extra depth. Since the world are pretty big, mastering the zoom function is important. (just like using the real google maps)

The Secret of Monkey Island, like Loom, shows Lucasfilm's continued success is not a fluke, or dependent on the Star Wars name. Another cool adventure game with tons of attention to detail, and a multitude of inventive puzzles to solve, this may well have you tearing your hair out at some of the trickier puzzles.

Faces is the latest puzzle game from the creators of Tetris. This gets a rather more negative review, as it is rather more frustrating than that game, with a bad run of pieces virtually guaranteeing defeat no matter how good you are. Obviously they haven't got the right balance of skill and luck going this time.

Harpoon is a submarine wargame. It's in black and white, but that doesn't hurt it too much. Not a bad simulation at all.

Mega Man III welcomes Rush to his side, and starts the process that would gradually result in the series picking up RPG elements and growing into a multigenre franchise where many of the the supporting characters are as popular as the main one. It doesn't actually get a brilliant review in itself, curiously. Well, technically, it does have it's flaws, and fighting the bosses can be a frustrating process. (I always had to save up tons of energy tanks to get through quite a few of them.) I suppose it's another case of critical and commercial success diverging.

Highly amusingly, Curse of the Azure Bonds gets put in the buggies this month, as it's mac version crashed whenever they tried to run it in colour. This does not stop them from putting more hints for it in the clue corner. Oh, the constant hassles of upgrading and compatibility. One reason consoles continue to be popular, despite frequently being several years behind computers in terms of raw power and sophistication.


Bane of the cosmic forge also gets advertised immediately after the column. With a topless female demon, (nipples strategically obscured, of course) no less. Surprised they can get away with that, really. Guess it is sticking to the letter of their code. And what the executives don't know can't hurt them.


Sage advice claws back another 2/3rds of a page. Skip is tougher than the naysayers think. You'll see.

How much weight can you carry while flying (As much as normal. Your definition of normal may vary)

Your statement in issue 157 contradicts the DMG (Not really. It's the same difference)

How does invisibilty work. Why isn't it an alteration. (it bends light. If you used that criteria all spells would be alterations. It's already the overpowered catchall school.
We won't put spells in it unless we really can't justify it being somwhere else. )

Why can't psionicists be chaotic (their minds go off on a tangent before they can actually do anything significant )

Do druids have to be completely neutral, or just one component (Completely! We will not budge on this, just as we will not budge on the paladin's lawful goodness!)

Alignment sucks! Druids have to oppose their party at every turn to preserve the balance! This makes no sense! (No, You make no sense! Preserving the cosmic balance does not involve doing one chaotic evil deed per lawful good one. The cycle of the universe can absorb minor shifts anyway. Druids just prevent permanent ascendancy by any one side. Also, don't confuse lawful pompous busybody with lawful good. Blah blah blah blah, proper way to do things, sense of perspective blah blah blah.)


Fiction: Thor goes fishing by Lois Tilton. Moderately in theme here, with a rather humorous little mythical tale. Loki's up to his usual trickery, sending Thor off to make an idiot of himself with a few well placed jibes, which he then takes full advantage of. The epic effects gods can have on the world, even without thinking about it, are played up for laughs, and the whole thing seems like good inspiration for a more lighthearted Nobilis game. Cosmic power doesn't have to mean constantly battling epic foes, maintaining a tedious policy of noninterference in the lives of mortals you could squash like bugs and worrying about the balance of the universe. It can mean doing 7 impossible things before breakfast, creating a universe in the morning, then revamping another one by siring a messiah on a nice virgin (while leaving her physically intact of course) in the evening. And that does sound like a good deal more fun. So this is another piece that's both entertaining and moderately thought provoking. Sometimes, you've just gotta cut loose.


TSR previews: First up, unsurprisingly, is the new D&D basic set. This time revised by Troy Denning. Even more than last time, when Frank Mentzer was in charge, it's designed to be newbie friendly. Have they gone too far into patronising territory? Are computer games now too big, shiny and distracting? In any case, you don't see as many people talking fondly about this version being their first experience as often as the Moldvay and Mentzer ones, despite Denning being a pretty big name. What's with that?

Marvel superheroes also gets a new basic set this month. Jeff Grubb is still the guy in charge here, and he also wants to expand their gaming base. Lure those comics fans in. Lure, lure I say! Don't just read stories about superheroes, create your own! I suppose that's one of the biggest barriers to entry. This is not a hobby for the lazy, particularly on the DM's side.

The forgotten realms heads up north to FA2: Nightmare Keep. Rick Swan takes us on a relatively traditional dungeon crawl. Treasure, guarded by monsters. What more could an adventure ask for? Do you really want to be like Drizzt, angsting over stuff as in Sojourn, the final book of his prequel trilogy.

Dragonlance is also obsessed with elves. DLS2: Tree lords lets us see the Silvanesti, and save them as well. Mind you, given what wankers they've generally been in the books, I do not find myself particularly inclined to do so.

Ravenloft gets their very own monstrous compendium. Yesss, preciouss, ssseee what horrors lie within the missstssess. Relatively few creatures here, but they get more descriptive depth than other world's ones, for extra creepiness.

On the generic AD&D side, we have HR1: Vikings. Rune magic, longboats, and all kinds of Historically Accurate stuff. You just know there's more of these on the way to cover other periods.

And Buck Roger's second trilogy comes to a close. Matrix Cubed sees the fate of the inner planets hang in the balance. So let's save them, and move onto the outer ones, already! Pretty obvious, really.

Dragon Magazine Issue 168: April 1991

part 4/4


Novel ideas: In another case of related stuff being close together, here we have some elaboration on Dragonlance's novel schedule for the year. Doing prequels is a particular headache, especially when you're not the original author. You have to work hard to maintain continuity and characterization, and still tell an interesting story. And of course, despite being fully aware of these dangers, more than a few of the novels of the next few years will fail at one or the other. Slightly more interesting  is psychoanalysing Krynn's approach to relationships. The tendency for drama and polarized divisions of good and evil means that relationships are simultaneously highly valued, and prone to tensions breaking them up for reasons that would seem stupid to most objective observers. And the good guys wind up enemies of other good guys over petty issues, just like the bad guys. I suppose healthy relationships are an enemy of the conditions that produce good stories. Still, it does differ very dramatically from my personal experiences in both gaming and reality, so I guess it's another reason dragonlance has never really resonated with me. I guess it's good to quantify things like that, rather than leaving it to gut reactions.


Chessex realize that it makes more sense to put the number on a D4 on the top rather than the bottom of each side. Such an obvious refinement, and now tons of companies do it. Now that's progress.


The marvel-phile: Some fairly substantial changes to the usual format here this month. This is where they start using this column as a regular airing ground for changes in existing characters. I'm vaguely surprised that this was only implemented so close to when I started reading, as it felt like a regular feature then.   Course, for this first one, they need to do a whole ton of catching up, trying to fill us in on most of the big events of the last couple of years. Entire superteams have been disbanded, or killed and brought back to life. Quite a few villains are also dead - for now. Ghost rider has a new host, The human torch & rogue have lost their powers, Hawkeye is a cyborg, some more old WWII characters have been released from suspension chambers, Dr Druid has hair, and the hulk is temporarily in control of himself. Looks like they've now got an active metaplot busy with regular worldshaking events and more averted apocalypses than healthy balanced breakfasts. The next few years are going to be interesting times for them, and it looks like we'll get quite a bit more second hand news than we have been.

As with most features where they break or change format, this is rather more interesting than a standard entry, and in this case is also rather funny. As I've said before, you don't even have to try to see the funny side of comic worlds, especially when everything that happened is deconstructed and put together in one place like this. Get the image macros ready, and let's hope the hologram covers show up when scanned.


Look sharp!: Hmm. For some reason they've decided to put a crossword in. That's a turnup for the books. Since Roger's also put a questionnaire in his editorial, I wonder if this'll become a regular occurrence. Well, they are a nice part of many people's everyday newspaper reading, and good mental exercise to boot, so it's not beyond the bounds of probability. Still, I have enough on my plate reviewing all this stuff. I don't feel the desire to solve it as well. I'm sure there are interesting insights to be derived from studying newspaper crosswords across the decades and analyzing them statistically, but I really don't have time for that.


Vampire! Man's darkest fear walks the earth! Now that's a good teaser. Soon the swine will stalk the land, bringing the dreaded plagues of narrativism and goth girls with them. Are you ready to become the monster? I find it interesting that the distributor, Esdevium, gets higher billing than White Wolf, the company making the game. What's all that about?


Treasures more real: Following on from last month, we have another article that points out how broken D&D's economics are, and how much customizing stuff can add to the interest of your game. Where do all those thousands of GP monsters have come from? What is it's history? What condition is it in? Figuring that out for every item found would be a difficult and tedious process. What's a good solution for this? Random Tables! Say hello to another largely unconnected subsystem. Y-y-y-yawn. Using this will require quite a bit of rerouting of your campaign, especially if you try it midway through. And you'll still have to think up the specifics, even if this provides the generalities. So laudable intentions, but inadequate execution. Another bit of filler to make up the page count.


Harpers bold: Ed Greenwood contributes a couple of twinked out Harpers this month. Jhastar Belnold and Talantra Bowgentle. Neither has a single ability score below 15, and both have met big names in the Realms history and engaged in heroics that have brought them a modest degree of notoriety of their own. Their magical item collections are rather boring and practical though, and they have ridiculously little money for characters of their level. They definitely feel like something that was whipped up to tell a story rather than actually generated through rolling dice and built up through actual play. He encourages you to have them show up randomly in the wilderness and /steal the thunder from/ help out your group. This showcases one of the worst aspects of the Realms, that it can be so chock-a-bloc with powerful good guys that there just doesn't seem to be room for your adventurers to make any difference. This does not make for very pleasing reading, and is one of the worst things he's ever contributed to the magazine, even more annoying than spellfire. I wash my hands of this.


Why spy?: Espionage stuff has definitely been on the decline in here over the past couple of years. They haven't released any books for Top Secret for nearly a year now, and it doesn't look like any are on the schedule either. It's decade long run is winding down. And that people are forgetting about this is reinforced by an article aimed heavily at the newcomer, trying very hard to get more people to try out this fun little genre. It's actually a pretty good one, as well as being a full 7 pages long, taking you through the conventions of the genre and giving lots of advice helpful to both GM and players. Still, it doesn't change that all of this has been said before in the magazine, albeit not as well in many cases. If I'd started reading the magazine a few issues earlier, I would have loved this. But now, it stands as a stark reminder of the hard balancing act between providing material aimed at newbies and long time readers that they have to do. A problem that's only going to get worse for both me and them.


2 sided dice, courtesy of the US mint? Someone's taking the piss here. I really don't think your currency needs advertising.


Ironically, Chill is also releasing a vampire sourcebook at the very same time. I find this amusing.

Dragonmirth has more bloody jesters. Even an edition change can't shake them off. Yamara still hasn't realized her powers. Twilight empire has a total baba yaga rip-off.


Through the looking glass: Having fulfilled his ridiculous quotient for the year last month, Robert keeps things serious this time. The lead bill is currently on hold due to the USA's current military ventures, so let's take advantage of this fact and get buying and painting. Responsibly of course, for we are a family friendly magazine. This month's minis are: A whole bunch of dwarves. A dragon holding a crystal ball. A rather drunk leprechaun (which leads Robert to once again stress to our young audience that Drinking Is Wrong in classic 80's cartoon conclusion stylee ) A rather neat set of hex blocks that look good for constructing impromptu maps. And a bunch of officially licensed Drow. With everything getting between 4 and 5 stars, there's no great dirt dishing or other interesting stuff going on here, humorous asides apart.


War law. Mass combat for rolemaster. It's a snappy name. I'll bet the contents aren't nearly so cool and easy to understand though.


Another flawed but fascinating issue, with plenty of useful stuff, and a whole bunch of important historical markers which also trip my personal nostalgia buttons. V:tM, Mega man, the new Princess Ark, and plenty of familiar bits of goofy yet usable humour. The place really feels like home. Before long I'll have surpassed my original class levels with my new one, and be able to draw upon the powers of both classes freely. Pretty awesome, eh? I can't wait to get through these next few issues.

Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991

part 1/5


124 pages. At last, the magazine has reached it's greatest regular size. We've now reached the era where they were producing the greatest amount of official D&D material each month, both here and in terms of general supplements. (Whether this was a golden age or a golden shower is very much a matter of opinion, but we are unlikely to ever see them produce this much again.) While there are a few specials that are even larger, this is the size it maintains throughout the majority of the decade, before starting to shrink again. At last, the issues won't keep taking longer and longer to get through. Whew. Funny to think that I'm now regularly going through ones bigger than the one that caused so much surprise, way back in 1980. I guess it's like a frog in boiling water. Turn the heat up gradually, and it doesn't realize just how bad things are for it. Or more positively, it's like gradually moving up through weight classes by bodybuilding. You've got to warm up properly, prepare and practice. Which curiously, is also the theme of the issue. That's a new one on me, but an idea I could see yielding some valuable material. As long as the result isn't characters buffing themselves up tediously before each battle, and having to keep track of all the changes to their stats. Let's see what we can see see see.

In this issue:


Letters: A letter asking for more DM'ing advice. The stuff in the books just isn't enough. You've come to the right place. Roger can point out dozens of articles in the magazine's history that help with this, and intends to publish more in the future. Good luck collecting them all though.

A letter from someone who's recently picked up a disability about the article they did on that. Once again, Roger is pretty helpful, proving that he knows the history of the magazine inside out, in even greater depth than I do. Well, 10 years compared to 2, it'd be more worrying if he didn't. However, this does have the side effect of reminding me how little attention they've given to race and sexuality and how they relate to gaming. You'd think they'd have found the space for at least one article in in 16 years. No wonder roleplaying has wound up such a whitebread hobby.

A letter from someone having trouble keeping all the various characters and organizations in the Forgotten Realms straight. It's not easy, and it's only going to get harder. Good luck.


Editorial: Or let's see just how much of a dick Roger can be when he puts his mind too it, as he reveals the answers to last month's questionnaire. Which shouldn't surprise anyone who's played his adventures, such as Baba Yaga's hut and The Twofold Talisman. There are millions of ways you can do this job wrong, and every sentence is a minefield, just waiting to blow your foot off if you make a wrong step. Part of this is due to the persistent exceptionalism is the english language, much is due to the bloating of supplements (including changes made due to enshrining of previous editorial errors), part is due to legal issues of copyright, TSR's family friendly policy, etc, and sometimes there is no right answer, so you'll have to make the choice, and then try and get other people to stick to it. Is it any wonder he's a little mad by now. Good thing the other editors have got his back. (or is that sniggering at him behind his back ) This all feels a bit meanspirited, like he's saying I'm the editor of Dragon Magazine, and you're not, so don't get uppity when I make a few mistakes. Entertaining, but certainly not likable.


New weapons for old: Or welcome to the arms race. In real life, weapons varied quite substantially from century to century, as people constantly looked for an edge, and took advantage of new construction technologies. Here's some ideas that seem based upon those principles. Crossbows with more than one shaft, swords designed to pierce armour, hypersharpened swords that do extra damage for the first few hits, triple balled morningstars (these are particularly twinky, with a huge dps average, especially if you have a strength bonus) there is a certain degree of power creep here compared with core weapons. Since many of them do DX+1 damage, this also means they're less likely to whiff over long campaigns. Think carefully about allowing these ones, especially if you don't track the speed factors, space required and weapon vs armor tables that provide an element of rebalancing.


Creative casting: Ah yes, this old chessnut. Looks like the arms race is taking place here as well. Turning spells to uses other than those their designers intended is a tradition as old as the first gaming group. It's been incorporated into a few articles, and somewhat more forum letters, but hasn't got it's own article before. This is the kind of thing I delight in both as a DM and a player. It serves to remind us that a magic-user can usurp a thief's job with very little effort, continual light is actually one of the most awesome spells in the game, monster summoning is useful for so much more than combat, especially when you can pick the creature, and anything created can be sold, even if it's existence is only temporary. A couple of these look like they're really pushing the limits of the rules, and some DM's would disallow those interpretations, and quite a few more would be nerfed deliberately so these tricks definitely won't work in 3rd ed. (and even fewer in 3.5 and 4e. ) Still, mustn't let the spoilsports get us down. There's always a few loopholes somewhere in a ruleset. It's up to you to find them and abuse them, or possibly fix them if you're that way inclined. And that kind of arms race can be almost as fun as the IC action.


Learn something new every day: More new nonweapon proficiencies. Even more than spells, they're easy to think up, as you just look around and draw direct from reality, little adaption needed. Although as mentioned before, you don't have nearly enough slots to buy even the ones essential to your concept if you have a complex job. Still, here's 10 more skills, that will eat up a total of 17 slots. Alchemy, Astronomy, Botany, Calligraphy, Cartography, Diplomacy, Geology, Orienteering, Street Fighting, and Street Sense. Not particularly bad on their own (apart from street fighting, which really should be a weapon proficiency, putting it in nonweapon stuff causes the same issue as Palladium's boxing skill in terms of giving advantages to people who powergame for combat potential over everything else. ) they once again rub in the fact that you just don't have enough skills in AD&D. Which means unlike new spells and items, who's appearance is frequently treated with glee, these will be far less likely to come in handy in your own games. Slightly dispiriting, really.

Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991

part 2/5


The strategy of tactics: Ahh, now this is one that is pretty influential, and becomes standard next edition, as well as having equivalents in tons of other games. Unlike two previous articles that have introduced a bunch of special tricks that you need to buy to use well, this gives 4 basic tactics anyone can use. Fighting defensively, forgoing attack entirely for full defense, and attacking with two degrees of extra recklessness that increase your chances of hitting and being hit. A small addition that adds quite a bit to your feeling of choice in combat, without unbalancing things in particular, and lets player skill play a slightly larger part in determining the outcome of battles. This is one I strongly approve of. Every game where combat is a major part should involve a decent degree of valid choices in your combat options. Just trading blows back and forth until someone falls gets old all too soon. Incorporating something like this into your games is definitely one I recommend.


TSR previews: The tome of magic! New spheres, Quest spells, Wild mages and elementalists. And shitloads of magic items and spells. Just the thing to have all your spellcasters salivating over the cool new stuff they can do. Future products reference this one a lot, so like Legends and Lore, get ready to have to buy it and treat it as a de facto corebook to keep up with the joneses.

Far less essential are the TSR collectors cards. Buy tons of packs and trade the duplicates with your friends to get a full set. Gotta catch 'em all! Bleah. Keep it away.

For those of you who couldn't be bothered with getting every novel and module last year, FR12: Horde campaign gives you the big picture, plus more info on their lifestyles and environment in general. You probably want the boxed set first to make sense of this though.

Spelljammer has an interesting premise this month. SJ4: Under the dark fist. An entire crystal sphere has fallen to the forces of evil, and they're planing to do some major exporting of their primary produce. High level adventurers are needed to foil them before they flood the universe with cut price mass produced evil overlords driving the home grown ones out of business. Or something.

Marvel Superheroes are still in an X-menish mood with MSL1: X-terminate. It's those stupid great death robot squads, isn't it. Never build intelligent death robots. It's just asking for trouble.

And finally, Buck Rogers gives us his third module. 25CS3: A matter of Gravitol. Well, artificial gravity is pretty critical to every sci-fi series, simply due to the prohibitive cost of filming zero gee regularly. So in a logical universe, controlling the resources responsible for it would be a very profitable business. This doesn't sound too bad, actually. I must be getting used to these guys.  


The voyage of the princess ark: Haldemar starts to realize the more awkward side of his awesome new ship. Now she has a personality, and isn't afraid to show it, often being stroppy and gainsaying his commands. On the other hand, this probably also saves his life. When he winds up being captured again, this time by the Rajah of Jaibul, she senses this and homes in on him even though the crew don't know what do do.

Seems like we have an obvious india analogue in this month's travelogue section. Sind has a jungle section, some deserty badlands, and mountains in the north. This is next to the eastern europe analogue, for no apparent reason. Ahh, Mystara, where Immortal meddling means nations are just placed on the map like Sims houses, with weather and sociopolitics forced into unnatural shapes by the constant meddling from above. It's still considerably more realistic than ravenloft, where the things in charge barely even pretend there's an underlying world beyond the psychodrama prisons made for their amusement. Still, as long as it's a fun adventure, what does it matter if the world-building's a little sketchy.


The role of books: D'shai by Joel Rosenberg creates a world where everyone has some form of magic, except of course the unfortunate protagonist. This would be cause for enough angst in itself, but he also has to deal with being accused of murder as well. As with his previous books, it's real elements are well researched, and the fantasy elements are quite distinctive. He's as popular as ever around here.

The adept by Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris gets a rather negative review, apparently lacking the best qualities of both writers.  Might as well have not collaborated at all then.
 
Goblin moon by Teresa Edgerton is a very theatrically written swashbuckling tale. With highly dramatic, easily visualised scenes, and highly active characters, it sounds like a fun one.

Indiana jones and the peril at delphi by Rob MacGregor is another one that fails to take advantage of it's potential, as the writer seems to consciously reject pulp tropes without putting anything better in their place. Formulas are formulas for a reason, even if you personally don't like them.

The dagger and the cross by Judith Tarr manages to combine a whole bunch of elements without them getting short shrift. Set in Jerusalem during the crusades, it shows the other side of the conflicts covered in her previous book, while still managing to work as a standalone novel.

A book dragon by Donn Kushner is a pretty illustrated book about a dragon who has a book written about him, and then guards that book. Meta, eh? The illustrations demonstrate a similar sense of humour. It's probably a bit too slight a story to stand without the illustrations, but hopefully that won't become an issue.

The last unicorn by Peter S Beagle has also recently got an illustrated edition. This is not such a success, however, with the style of the drawings actively clashing with that of the writing. Not that it ruins the story, which is good enough on it's own, but it certainly doesn't add to it the way the previous one does.

Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991

part 3/5


The marvel-phile: Ghost Rider is back, with a new host! The cycle of life (and IP maintenance) continues. This of course means we get to go through the whole fun of doing the introductory and discovery stories again, only differently, as befits the personality of the new rider. They also introduce a new character who's never going to stick as a proprietary name, simply called Ghost. (which frankly, is right down there with Shadow as a supervillain name.  And at least a hedgehog is better company than Patrick Suayzee)  It's stuff like this that makes me appreciate the article about supers name in Aberrant more.

Also of note here are two issues that Dale raises. The first is a mechanical one. What exactly does being more invisible or intangible mean anyway? Actually a fairly simple and elegant solution to this. It only matters when it comes to conflicting powers rolling off against each other. Another small but significant bit of design technology that'll come into common use over the next decade. The other is a philosophical one on the nature of heroism, when applied to badass antiheroes who are almost as much a monster as the things they fight. Which is rather spoiled by a little editing error which means he says the opposite of what he intends to say. Still, the overall point is valid, and is very applicable to the media of the decade, as we see the rise of grimdark and everything that goes with it. So this might not be as funny as some of Jeff's old installments, but it is quite thought provoking. You can definitely use these as pointers to shape your own game.


The role of computers: The Lord of the Rings, vol 1 sees another game company pull out the stops to take advantage of the potential megasales. It makes sure that while the areas are familiar from the map, you get plenty of freedom to visit them out of order and find your own solution to the dangers besetting you. It may in fact be a little too big and slow, with lots of walking needed to get places, but it does capture the hobbit style of adventuring nicely.

Elvira is also an adventure game, albeit rather different. Explore a massive mansion and clear out all the monsters for our expansively cleavaged host. Combat, exploration, and lots of figuring out what items need to be combined with other ones to make potions & stuff to solve puzzles. Oh, and blood and guts. Yay for  avoiding bowdlerisation.

Eye of Horus gets a rather poor review, as they simply found it boring. That's no good at all for a game.

Archipelegos fares somewhat better, even if it does have a plot that seems rather captain planet. Save the world by destroying the toxic obelisks and the viral trees and necromancers protecting them. Oh, if only it were that easy. POLLUTION DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!

The Secret missions expansion disc for Wing Commander does rather nicely for itself, building on the original with harder new missions and a nice storyline linking them together. Nothing like a bit of continuity to hold things together.

Shadow of the beast I & II both get 5 stars. The first is a well done action game, while the second builds on that to add adventure game elements like cutscenes, talking to people and buying stuff.

Blazing Lazers is another arcade shoot-em-up where you fly a ship through space, kill aliens, and collect power-ups. They think it's a pretty good example of it's type.  

Command H.Q. gets our buggies award this time, for it's badly designed copy protection. Once again, they make cheating seem the more attractive option, thus hurting their own cause.


Fiction: Swordfish and saucery by Deborah Millitello. One of our occasional contributors manages to get another piece published. It's a rather clever little story too, both in terms of the IC plotting and the deliberate expectation shifting wordplay.  Rereading it, you can see all kinds of little details which are actually significant. One to draw upon if you want to write mysteries where the answer is in plain sight, but the players still probably won't get it until it's too late. Looks like the fiction department here is as strong and varied as ever.


Role-playing reviews decides to have another round of covering various game's magic systems. Ever popular, and often quite complex, it's no surprise that supplements creating new ones and expanding on existing ones continue to come thick and fast. As with last time, before starting on the reviews, Ken talks a bit about the magic systems in various games. They have a history as long as roleplaying itself, and they continue to evolve. What interesting ideas have they come up with in the last couple of years?

Elemental companion is a Rolemaster supplement. Unsurprisingly, this creates a variant upon the D&D elemental plane principle, and then details the spellcasters who draw their powers direct from the various elemental planes. Since they have lots of overarching effects that are applied to each element, this makes the spell system quite flexible and good for applying creatively. They also detail a whole bunch of monsters, and rules for creating hybrids of terrestrial and elemental creatures. Seems likely 3e was influenced by ideas like this. Unsurprisingly, the rules are rather more complex and table heavy than D&D, with their distinct approach to horrible ironic deaths fully present. Good luck playing one character long enough to get those awesome 50th level spells.

The complete wizards handbook gets a fairly positive review. The new crunch is great, just what the doctor ordered. The roleplaying advice is less praised, with ken finding it a bit wishy-washy, and some bits feel like filler to pad out the page count. No great disagreements with you there. It's the crunch we remember and keep coming back too, because it's the stuff our characters are actually using again and again.

Aysle is a worldbook for TORG, and it's associated magic system. The high fantasy genre region, it's a torus shaped world which has it's day/night cycle controlled by the sun bobbing up and down in the middle. This makes mapping pretty interesting. Everyone has at least basic spellcasting capabilities, which their economy revolves around. There is objective good and evil, and big chunks of advanced tech don't work. As with all the other realities in TORG, it's got people from it who are trying to take over the world, and impose their axioms of reality on ours, which makes for extra fun culture clashes. This makes for a great backdrop for spectacular plane spanning battles, but the worldbuilding rarely goes beyond that backdrop level. If you want to tone down the cinematicness and delve into the logical ramifications of their magic system on the development of societies there, you'll have to do it yourself.


Dark Conspiracy. More modern day horror gaming coming out at around the same time as the WoD and Chill. Must have been something in the water.

Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991

part 4/5


Bazaar of the Bizarre: Ed Greenwood turns his mind to ends more useful than last month, with another collection of quirky magical items. Back in issue 74 he gave us seven swords, now he gives us a dozen daggers. (so what we need are nine clubs with nails in, eight bohemian ear spoons, six spears a-stabbing, FIVE FAUCHARD-FORKS! Four flails lashing, three tridents twirling, and possibly a partridge in a pear tree. Can you guess when I wrote this bit ) Since these collections from him are generally pretty good, I'm quite optimistic about this. Let's see what cool tricks he's come up with this time.

Blades of banishing dispel wards by cutting through them. Just the thing for a fighter who distrusts most magic and doesn't have a wizard on the team.

Chill Blades not only hurt, they make you frostbitten and appropriately clumsy. This'll make fighting enemies with tons of hit points and big damage outputs a lot easier, as you can really wear them down.

Dagger of defiance make it near impossible to get rid of you magically. Another good antiscrewage one for a fighter expecting trouble.

Daggers of doomwarding give you a second chance in a pinch. Another thing that could be just what the doctor ordered. After all, what price your life in a world where save or die effects aren't uncommon.

Dragonfangs let you shoot (not very impressive) lightning bolts and kill dragons more easily. These ones are probably more appropriate for wizards who'd like an extra blasty effect for if they run out.

Fang Daggers have snakes heads and are poisonous. They're still not as nasty as most save-or-die monsters, but certainly not terrible. Once again we're seeing that new powers and creatures introduced here are actually frequently less terrifying than the old ones.

Grimwald's Dagger is another sadistic creation from the mage who brought you the healing screwing greymantle. (see issue 92) It makes horrible noises and causes you to suffer from uncontrollable laughter. I think we're definitely getting a good idea of his personality and approach to combat.

Invisible blades are pretty self explanatory. They're completely silent too. Just the thing for an assassin. Watch you don't cut yourself trying to find it again.

Jump Daggers let you go all wuxia, adding an awesome cinematic edge to your combat. They have another special use that's even cooler, and would never be allowed in later editions. Someone taking proper advantage of this would be very good at winning fights without anyone getting hurt.

Rust blades are made from rust monster antennae, and their special effect should be pretty obvious. Now anyone can screw you over and ruin all your stuff in combat. Muahahahaha!!!!!!  

Speaking Daggers allow you to incorporate the worst aspects of mobile phones into your combat, repeating a prerecorded message every time they hit something. They can be both incredibly irritating, and used inventively as a secret way to deliver messages. Just the thing to give a villain with a fondness for Xanatos Gambits. Deedoloo dedoloo deduldumdedee. Genius.

Spider fangs let you generate webs, and pass through other people's. Another one that's good for dealing with people without directly fighting them.

So this is a fun collection, full of items that aren't generally obscenely powerful (People obviously prefer their unique named weapons a bit bigger and more impressive looking), but strongly useful, and which reward clever thinking and encourage playful action scenes. Looks like he's very much back on form.


Forum is interestingly multicultural this month.
Scott A Steinmetz talks about his convention experiences, and gives some advice on picking con games to join in on. Generally, the more choice, the better your chance of finding something you like, so big conventions have an edge. Don't be afraid to haggle, it's direct dealing, not a shop. And remember, it's not actually that hard to get involved as a GM or other volunteer either. The harder you go for it, the more fun you're likely to have.
 
Fabio Luis De Paoli speaks out in favour of letting evil characters indulge the full range of villainy if you allow them in your game. Otherwise it's just a bit wishy-washy. People need to remember it's only a game, and doing vile things to each other within it shouldn't spoil RL friendships.  

Dan Howarth rebutts Toby Myers on the computer debate thing. They seem to be talking past one-another. Perils of written communication.

Kristian Teglbjaerg encourages you to build your character as an individual, with a proper backstory and such, rather than just part of a party to fill a role. Solo play can be a fun way of getting to really know your character. Ahh yes, another thing that has risen and then fallen again in D&D land, with 4e in particular encouraging you to build and play your characters as a team.

Love your thread. Seriously.

Dragon Magazine Issue 169: May 1991

part 5/5


Sage advice is back to 2 1/2 pages. Nice to see Skip benefiting from the extra page count.

What climates is Survival appropriate for (Any terrestrial ones. For underwater or extraplanar, you'll need something else)

Do you need to spend a slot to be literate (yes. Note that magical notation is not a part of standard writing, and comes free with class training. Wizards can still be generally illiterate.)

How much does a kayak cost. Do you need a proficiency to use it (Hee. You said Kayak. Hyuk hyuk Ryuk ZOMG death note people! )  

Do you need a skill for everything? You don't get enough slots! ( Yeah, these rules don't hold up without a decent degree of fiat and common sense to keep them lubricated. This is a strength, not a weakness! Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy rules lawyer, more interested in breaking the game than making it work! We don't want your kind around here. )

Can I backstab and apply specialization bonuses. (No. You can't combine abilities from different classes in the same action. It's one or the other. You aren't some filthy 0 level piecemeal character. You're a proud follower in the line of an archetypical skill set and you ought to act like it! )

Can you stack mirror image spells (sure, as long as they're additive, not multiplacative, why not. )

I still have questions about magic jar ( We shall have to do something about that spell. Whatever Skip says, it never seems to satisfy them. Why are they so damn attached to their souls and interested in what happens to them if you do various stuff anyway? )

How do you use flame arrow (All at once, with great brutality. But really, did you ever take this in place of the standard fireball? )

What happens to submerged creatures when you cast mud to rock ( Trappage. You'd better scramble fast, try and get out while it solidifies)

Do walls of iron fall over ( Quite easily, apparently. You may want to look at a more eco (and by eco we mean people, for being crushed to death is a very definite environmental hazard) friendly building option. )

Are undead, constructs and other technically nonalive monsters affected by polymorphing (yes, unless their descriptions say otherwise)

Do bags of holding generate air when closed (nope. It'll get stuffy soon if you try hiding there. )

Why do potions of heroism only work on warriors and 0 level characters (because otherwise they'd be multi-classed, and the calculations would be too bloody complicated. )

What are ranger's prime requisites ( Rather a lot. You ain't getting that XP bonus on method I matey)

How do | do ability checks for monsters (don't. Just roll a die and apply common sense. )

How high is a wall of sand (Ridiculously, skyscrapingly high. Um. Has Skip got the length and height mixed up? )

Doesn't 12+12=24 (only when there's nothing else in the equation. Pay attention. )  


Dragonmirth offers an interesting solution to D&D economic problems. Yamara has to try and keep her husband under control, and not the other way around. Twilight empire finds an excuse to get the male characters in /skirts/ Kilts.


Through the looking glass: Like Ken before him, Robert opens up his reviewing techniques to us, for the sake of transparency and dealing with attempts at corruption. It's a small community, and it's amazing how petty people can be. Still,  this shows it's easier to judge minis for objective technical quality and usefulness than it is books, where the value is in the ideas more than it is the object. A model either has flash lines and indistinct details or it doesn't. (although I know that you can get bad batches of a decent figure, just as I've sometimes got books with chunks of pages duplicated or upside down.) And if assembly is required, everyone appreciates instructions that don't look like they were translated from japanese to english by someone from india. Basically, the whole thing reads like a big "back off, buster!" to whichever company was trying to corrupt him into giving them higher marks, pointing out that no amount of bluster will change the fact that their minis have a certain degree of shoddy construction, and the rest of the magazine will back him up on this stance. Which is pretty cool, really. Anyone know which company that actually was? We certainly don't see this stuff in the magazine the way we did in the 70's.

After all that drama, the minis reviews are a bit of a letdown really. A bunch of battleships celebrating the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Bismark. It had a lifespan greater than the Titanic, but it too went down without really fulfilling it's potential. (which is probably a good thing in this case. ) Now you can get models of the various participants in these battles and reenact them. A wizard, an elf knight, and a bunch of cyberpunk samurai return us to fantasy terrains, with barbarians and dwarves providing the muscle for a fairly complete party. Business as usual, with everything getting between 4 and 5 stars. Can't see any companies complaining about that, ironically.


Another issue with quite a bit of stuff that's fun, quite a bit of stuff that's useful, and several things that are thought-provoking too. The tension and controversy that marked last year's output seems to be diminishing again, or at least becoming more manageable for them, which leaves them free to actually produce stuff that we both can and want to apply practically. The result is certainly quite nice for me, even if the themed sections are still very hit and miss. If they keep this showing up, their 15th birthday is going to be a good one. I hope they've got some nice presents for this big number.