Quote from: (un)reason;318001Snarfquest is just embarassing. The anachronisms are painful, and going to be integral.

I'm glad someone else feels this way about that comic. Elmore is a talented artist, though his black & white work is inferior to his color work. He's often praised highly for his color work, and often quite rightly - though his female characters tend to have the Exact. Same. Face. in every painting. Plus, those faces tend to show no emotion of any kind, no matter what the context.

The B&W work is obviously by a talented artist, but what he uses that talent to depict is, well, irritating to look at. Looking back on Snarfquest, I can't recall a single non-human creature that Elmore drew that was appealing in any way, or which looked cool or intimidating or...well, anything, other than cartoony.

In addition, if I recall correctly, Elmore also wrote this strip, didn't he? Regardless, the writing is weak. The storyline meandered, character development seemed random and unmotivated, and if a writer could find a more grating way to depict various accents and speech patterns or impediments, I've yet to read it. I never felt like the strip was going anywhere; it seemed like it was just wandering around. Compare this comic to later fare like Jeff Smith's "Bone," and the deficiencies are glaring. I tried hard to give a damn about this comic, and never received a reason to do so.

Wormy also suffered from lack of narrative focus, but Trampier's gorgeous art generally made up for it...although it grew tiresome after a while to see such talent focused way too much on the rather uninteresting ogres and goblins that seemed to dominate the comic for long stretches.

It seems to me that both strips could've benefited greatly from stronger writers or a firm editorial hand that had a definite vision for the comics. This is especially true of Wormy, where the art could be absolutely stunning - the various installments with the wizard and the winged panther/demon/what-have-you are good examples.

Dragon Issue 81: January 1984

part 1/2

100 pages. Your module design sucks. You always go over the limit, even the good entries. We're sick of the colossal editing and rewriting jobs needed to squeeze them into our self-imposed 16 page limit. So we're not going to publish any more of your amateur attempts. Sorry about that. Now try and avoid splurging over next time. I know it's hard, but you gotta stick closer to the format. Or go to judges guild. Oh, wait. :devil: Anyway, happy new year. Hope you enjoy the mid 80's as much or more than you did the early part. Lets get cracking.

In this issue:

Out on a limb: A letter complaining at them for putting the Wacko world module off-centre, and with adverts in it. They apologize and say they hope they won't have to do it again. Commercial considerations, last minute changes, excuses excuses.
Two more letters asking for out of stock or unreleased stuff. As ever, they have to politely turn them down, for the sake of their own sanities.
A correction to the psionic stuff in issue 78, that on further examination, is wrong in itself. (as far as we can tell, given how badly written the original psionics rules were. ) Sorry reader, you're the one in error this time.
A letter snarking in a rather pretentious manner at those people niggling about realism, quoting Moorcock extensively. Frankly, you're making yourself look dumb, Mr Douglas. Even if we choose not to make our games realistic, it's important to know how they deviate from reality. Awareness is the first step to being able to manipulate things in an informed and predictable way.
A letter complaining about the crappy new paper the last few issues were printed on, as well as the general downslide in quality. Kim gets fairly heated in his rebuttal to this. He certainly doesn't think the magazine is poor quality, or bad value for money. But then, he would say that, even if he didn't really feel it.
A letter asking why most of the articles are for AD&D rather than basic D&D. They reply that OD&D is out of print, so of course they aren't publishing stuff for that, and the new basic sets are being ignored because they want to keep that game simple and not rigidly defined. They may seem like the same game, but they aren't, and we don't reccomend you mix them.
Some rules questions for king of the tabletop.
A letter on psionics, xanth, and more reprint stuff. This gets a very lengthy and considered reply, in which the company line is trotted out again for another lap round the block.
A (possibly joke ) letter from a DM who refuses to let his players read the magazine.  They give him a reproving reply, saying any DM who nicks all their ideas from the magazine and modules without any adaption doesn't deserve to be called such. So stop cutting into our profits, dagnammit.

Taking the sting out of poison: Another nerfing article? Noooooo! Oh, I speak too soon. This is actually an attempt to de-nerf things after the last one on this topic went way too far that direction, in the opinion of the writer. A high detail article from someone who has obviously read all the previous articles on the subject, and then did quite a lot of thinking about how to fix the issue. Costs, onset times, social issues, harvesting from monsters, antidotes, all get looked at. If you're running a high crunch game, this looks like a pretty solid expansion to keep poisons useful, but not overpowered, and if you want to run a poison-centric game (Playing a group of adventurer who make harvesting poisons from monsters and selling them one of their primary goals would be an interesting game. ) should be pretty helpful. The level of dryness keeps this from being a classic article, but It's still a solid above average, and if I get the chance I intend to apply the lessons learned here.

Fiction: In the cleft of queens by Esther M Lieper. A quite distinctively written little tale of outwitting a dragon. Sometimes, the tongues is indeed mightier than the sword. But remember, they've been around longer than you, and they're possibly smarter than you as well. That does not mean losing is inevitable. You've just gotta have style. As they say in Nobilis. The smart man and the strong man may never match up to the god, but the passionate man may impress them. Same principle here.

Eh oop. Looks like the flow of letters has reached a point where they feel the need to split them up. So they're introducing the forum, where the longer debates can take place without direct editorial interference while the straight questioning letters stay at the front. Once again the magazine takes a step towards the format I remember. So lets see what the first batch of comments and complaints are.
Mike Mrozek disapproves of Lew's level of gaming paranoia in issue 79. Ahhh, the military wargamer vs people who prefer freewheeling dramatic fun argument. Already in force as new people stream into the hobby.
David Hutton talks about the horrors of characters who take a single level in fighter, and then dual-class to another one straight away. Er, did you not read the sage advices which made it abundantly clear that you suffer the restrictions of both classes and lose the benefits of exceptional Str and Con if you change classes. Silly person. While the rules are breakable, this isn't one of those cases. And you'd need to be using one of the twinky ability generation methods to do that reliably, anyway. You can easily restrict that.
William L Collins, Ed Zmitravich, Rodney L Barnes, Joseph Wilkinson and Andrew Briggs have pontification about the psionics system, and how to fix it to be more balanced and sensible. These are not all in agreement, of course.
David Carl Argall talks about the beholder ecology, picking holes in their presented hunting strategy and how it interacts with their powers. Remember, beholders are deadly, but slow. Open air environments where their enemies can keep their distance and wear them down are a bad idea. You wanna use disintegrate and telekinesis to build yourself a good dungeon to trap your prey in. Stupid mating habits are a little more excusable, because we know how many dumb and impractical things humans will do in pursuit of sex despite supposedly being intelligent creatures. But we can play around with those as well in our own games.
And finally, Elizabeth Parry weighs in on the sexism found in the magazine. The automatic assumption of masculinity in some articles galls rather to her. Unless there is good reason, the articles should be written from an unbiased perspective.
So there we have it. In a few months, they'll start to get letters diliberately aimed at getting in the forum, and then it'll start building it's own conventions. What debates will we see in future years. Who will become a regular in these pages. How long before the internet makes this feature redundant. Keep tuning in to find out.

The ecology of the basilisk: Ed Greenwood ploughs onward through the monster manual. Nictating membranes. Such a wonderful phrase. Nictating membranes. Aint no passing craze. It means no eye grit, for the rest of your days. Anyway. Let's not filk that again, no matter how easy it is. Before you know it, we'll have vagina dentata, and then we really won't be able to talk about this stuff in front of the kids.
So, Basilisks. Thankfully, like hedgehogs, their exceedingly effective natural defenses mean they have no need for intelligence, and are rather stupid and sluggish as a result. We get plenty of detail on their mating and social habits (like the catoblepas, they need to be rather careful around each other if they don't want to die accidentally. ) personality traits, and of course, how much you can get for selling one. So plenty of stuff that's exploitable in actual play, as well as fluffy stuff. Also notable it the first mention of baldurs gate that I've spotted. We'll be seeing a lot more of that in the future. Overall, another strong article from the master of worldbuilding.

The british are coming! Games workshop starts a big push to make an impact on the international market. Buy their stuff, blah blah blah.

The Forum in Dragon really makes you see how much the internet has benefited gaming (among a whole host of things). I recall some of the discussions lasting for months that nowadays would be exhausted with a one page thread on a message board. Reminds me of scifi books where starships and planets are limited by light-speed communications, having to wait hours, days, or months just to get a reply. Makes me glad for the internet, even if one does have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff - at least one can get to that good stuff more quickly.

Dragon Issue 81: January 1984

part 2/2

Figure feature: Castle creations give us a Mercenaries, spies and private eyes line of figures. A whole bunch of contemporary models for your action based modern situations
Grenadier models offer us a 13 piece set of elf models. Archers, wizards, scouts, and a unicorn rider. You could make a whole army outta that.
RAFM gives us the reptiliad line. Lizard men and their equally reptilian mounts. They get a whole load of fluff too, but you can easily cut that away.
Dark horse designs gives us some more elves, this time concentrating on the wilder side of them, with scanty clothing, mohawks and really big ears. That's an interesting culture clash.
Tag industries gives us a fighter/mage, and a suitably towering messenger of the gods. Scale, you can play with it.

Chariots for characters: Another fun little bit of ancient technology that would be eminently suitable to the D&D game, but gets surprisingly little use in games I've seen, gets the spotlight put on it. So we get costs, rules for using them in combat (which they are rather good for) and historical bumpf. A quite simple but effective article that gives us more cool options to play with for both PC's and monsters.

Cu Chulainn: Giants in the earth may be gone, but it's spirit lives on, in yet another super powerful NPC statblock. You know the drill. A quick regurgitation of the myths involving the character, plus some roleplaying advice. Seen it all before, will probably see it again, still not very keen on the format. Nuff said.

The ruins of Andril: They billed this as an adventure for high level characters. 8-11 still counts as high level for you people? No ambition. I guess once teleporting and resurrection come in, site based adventures don't work very well. Lets give it a shot anyway. Another 16 pager, this is the kind of tournament adventure that does not play fair, and is filled with clever ways to screw the players over and keep their powers from working as expected. It also has an amusing anachronism, plenty of evidence of previous failed adventurers, a time limit, and a nasty sting in the tail just when you think it's over. Contrary to my initial skepticism, I find myself rather liking this, as it's a good example of no mercy old skool design, without being a no hints deathtrap like the tomb of horrors or doomkeep. I could see myself having a lot of fun with this one. Two thumbs up.

Living in a material world: More stuff on equipment. Just because material components have a price doesn't mean they should be easily available. Some of that's rather weird stuff, and you'll have to go hunting for it yourself. (note that this is an important part of keeping spellcasters from overpowering other characters. Even if you don't make them play out all their shopping, deducting costs appropriately to the spells cast will help keep them from blowing powerful spells on every encounter and hogging all the limelight) Like the poison article earlier, this is very useful if you want to play a high detail game where proper resource management is critical.

Off the shelf: Master of the five magics by Lyndon Hardy is a personal favorite of mine, with it's high concept examination of the metaphysics of magic and swift paced clever plotting being a definite influence on my own worldbuilding style. The reviewer is a little less enthusiastic, pointing out that the characters aren't the most deeply developed, and the naming conventions suck. (also flaws I can see in my own work, amusingly enough. ) I can see why someone less scientifically minded wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did.
Soul-singer of Tyrnos by Ardath Mayhar gets almost as scathing a review as her previous books. (see issues 64 and 76) Depth, character development, plot, predictability. This book is weighed, and found very much wanting. One wonders why the reviewer keeps on reading her stuff if he hated the previous ones so much. One to skip without regrets.
The swordswoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, on the other hand, does get a quite positive review. While it does feature the same basic plot as her previous novels, as a female warrior is drawn into a fantasy world with very strong japanese tendencies, their characters are still easily as different as say, Conan and Kull. The main point of criticism is the cover, which seems to have been commissioned by people in marketing who haven't read the book. We do not need gratuitous cheesecake.

The role of books: Lew gives us some more good sources for our worldbuilding. This time, he wants to encourage us to stop using medieval stuff so much, and opens our eyes to the possibilities of Greek, Roman and Egyptian based cultures. There were lots of things that they did which differed massively from modern day life, including some which fall under the truth is stranger than fiction umbrella. While of course I cannot recommend wholesale stealing, picking and matching cultural elements will allow you to create a near infinite number of interesting nations to populate your world with. Don't get stuck in a rut.

Reviews: Shadows of yog-sothoth is the classic Call of Cthulhu adventure where you have to try and save the world from the big C himself. Comprised of seven interlinked scenarios, it should provide for months of adventuring. It gets plenty of praise, but is noted as taking quite a bit of effort to run, due to the open-endedness of some sections.
Ravenloft is of course another soon to be classic, that would go on to become the biggest selling standalone module ever, and spawn an entire campaign world around it. The conflict between D&D rules and tropes and those of the horror genre are immediately obvious, and the reviewer judges it as a failure as a horror adventure, especially in contrast to the previous CoC adventure. (he also thinks that gargoyles and golems are not suitable monsters for a horror game, which is a bit dumb. Statues and everyday objects coming to life unexpectedly is a classic horror trope.)  However, taken as a challenging D&D adventure with horror trappings, it succeeds just fine, with a strong sense of atmosphere and good visual layout, and an easy to play setup which allows for multiple reruns which still surprise the players, due to the clever fortune reading mechanic. It's certainly a step up from most D&D adventures of this era.
Brotherhood of the bolt is a system free adventure. It has a slight horror slant, but is mostly your standard adventure fare of infiltration tomb-robbing, intrigue, and suchlike. As it is system free, it gets to put a lot of effort into creating good maps, descriptions and characterizations instead. Despite being obviously an amateur production, it does a lot of things that still don't appear in most adventures today, such as timelines and relationship details. Still, competing against two classic products, it struggles to stand out from the crowd.

Dragonmirth is particularly sadistic this month. What's new sees dixie going undercover in draconic society. Wormy is still wanted for wargaming. Snarfquest involves two dramas colliding.

Isengard module for MERP now available. Sounds interesting.

Seems like this issue has a relatively small number of extra long articles. This is not a bad thing, as it means they get to tackle their respective topics in more depth than usual, which is always a problem in episodic periodicals. It's articles also have an unusually high quantity of stuff directly applicable to actual play, in the form of rules expansions and setting building advice. This is definitely a good thing, as they do so without neglecting the fluff, unlike so many 3rd and 4th ed articles of this type. Add in the start of the forum, and reviews of quite a few classic products as well, and you have one of their strongest issues ever. Looks like they've got this year off to a strong start. Lets hope they keep it up.

Dragon Issue 82: February 1984

part 1/2

86 pages

In this issue:

Loremaster. Yet another rolemaster product line is starting up. Tanara, yog mur, the iron wind. More stuff I've never heard of, and would be interested to know more about.

Out on a limb: A letter picking apart the stats in issue 80's module. You forgot a rule.  Now correct it.
Another letter pointing out that halflings cannot be druids. Kim reponds with the PC's are different maxim. NPC's can break the rules PC's are bound too any time the writer wants, so there.
Five more letters pointing out errors that they admit were valid, for various reasons. Kim apologizes. Making a magazine on time every month is incredibly hard work, and tis no surprise that some stuff slips through the net.
A letter asking for clarification on the combat computer as it pertains to monsters. Many of them don't map properly to PC armor types, so you'll have to just leave them out or spend ages on case by case adjustments.

Dr No. The official James bond supplement. You saw the Top Secret imitation, now you can buy the real thing. And there was much rejoicing, particularly amonsgst the people who had to go through the hassle of clearing the licensed products with the film company.

The forum: Nikki Purdue thinks that serfs in medieval times had things better than Katharine Kerr said. Really, it was a period of centuries over an entire continent. I'm sure these things varied widely.
S D Anderson pontificates on the planar cosmology, and how to make it work. He is of the opinion that there should be more than one plane per alignment, and this would solve overcrowding and turf war problems. But there only being one interesting thing in each infinite universe would make the planes feel even emptier. As it stands, creatures of the same alignment competing, or living on planes that don't match their morals because they got kicked around or chose to move (orcs and yugoloths, respectively) produces more interesting stories. I vaguely disagree with your thoughts.
Ralph Sizer thinks that the reason there shouldn't be official anti-paladins is because being good is harder than being evil, so it requires active sacrifices to maintain, while evil is the path of what I was going to do anyway. Ha. Have you ever tried being consistently evil? It's just as hard as being consistently good, because people keep trying to stop you. Someone else has experienced rather different life lessons to me.
Eric Odgaard thinks that the current multiclassing rules are balanced, actually. Hee. If it's working in your game, that's cool, I guess.
Laurel Golding doesn't think that dragon magazine and D&D in general is nearly as sexist as, say, chivalry and sorcery. I'll guess you weren't around for issue 3. Well it's nice to see some people aren't hypersensitive to every implied slight.

The ecology of the peryton: Nigel findley!!! One of gaming's most missed writers. And it looks like this is his first appearance in the magazine. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of him in the future. One of legend's stranger creatures gets a nicely creepy writeup, taking a weird, but relatively straightforward monster in actual play, and making it really rather disconcerting to deal with. I suppose you can do that even with monsters that familiarity has made prosaic, like goblins and tigers. He also introduces legends of lost glories for the creatures, and fleshes out the characters of the people doing the telling and their personal dynamics quite interestingly. One of those cases where the writer immediately stands out from the crowd, thanks to their already well developed personal voice. I look forward to seeing what else he gets published in here.

Wounds and weeds: Herbalism! Another excuse to heal and buff your characters when out in the woods away from easy shopping, and reduce an adventuring parties need for clerics. In fact, there's a little too much focus in this article on healing damage, at the expense of the other effects various herbs can have upon your health and state of mind. But I guess that's a problem with the underlying system, as well. It's certainly interestingly presented though, with decent fiction and nice illustrations of the various plants detailed. Despite it's limitations of scope, this is still a likable article, that punctures D&D's tropes in amusing fashion, and is very useful in actual play. One of those things I would have no hesitation about incorporating, as it is neither useless, nor overpowering. Just what the doctor ordered.

Enhancing the enchanter: Another dragonquest article. How pleasing. Quite a substantial one, too. The author takes a look at what is in his opinion the weakest of the schools of magic, and gives it a whole bunch of new things to do. Of course, I can't judge whether they bring things up to par, or overbalance them. So it goes. For all that I like them covering other systems in here for the variety, It still means I have to deal with bits I can't properly assess on a mechanical level.

Rings that do weird things: A bazaar of the bizarre by any other name would still still be just as sweet to shop at. 13 new types of magical ring, including two Ed Greenwood contributions. They're a pretty varied and useful bunch, with both combat and noncombat abilities well catered for. Only problem is, you don't have enough fingers to wear them all. Guess you'll have to share them amongst the party. Another collection of stuff that is both entertaining to read and instantly useful for an actual game. Just what the magazine should have.

New avenues for agents: Another non D&D article here, as they give us teasers for the top secret companion. Two new classes, a load of specialities, and some more informal roles that cross classes like becoming a rogue or double agent. Not sure about the presentation here, I mean, putting the XP tables first isn't the best way of saying Cool new stuff! Come and get it! But it's nice to see games other than D&D getting decent amounts of expansion material. And while you could play the informal roles anyway, spelling them out like this makes GM's more likely to allow players to do stuff like this, rather than being trapped in the "do mission, report back, get new mission" cycle. And expanding the scope of a game is usually good. They're still nowhere near the point of diluting the theme and overcomplicating the game by adding too many options. After all, going renegade or double agent is an established convention of the genre. It can cause problems in troupe based play, but that doesn't mean it should be forbidden outright.

A friend of mine at that time suddenly discovered the James Bond RPG. I think he may even have gotten the Dr. No expansion. He was really excited about it, but could find no one to play. At that time, I had no real interest in playing much beyond AD&D, and certainly nothing set in the modern day. This was especially true of secret agent games. My brother wanted to get into Top Secret, but after getting the game, he never really followed through - I think he expected me to GM it, and my utter lack of interest in the subject matter never prompted me to even read the game at that time. That's too bad. It would definitely be a different matter today. By the way, I keep forgetting that the James Bond RPG dates back that far! Too bad it's out of print. A new printing/revision of it would be welcome.

Dragon Issue 82: February 1984

part 2/2

The baton races of yaz: Hee. That cover could so be taken the wrong way. Not right at all. Anyway. C C Stoll gets another game published as this month's centerpiece. Celebrate the liberation of the planet Yaz with a game of cross-country tag-team racing. One of those deceptively simple looking strategy games that actually supports some clever tactics, particularly in the build stage. This means it'll probably take a few games to get the hang of, as you learn how to operate the landscape. Like most games detailed here, they include a bunch of optional rules, which should add a few more replays before you get bored with the game and move onto something else. Another solid addition to their ever growing set of mini-games.

Curing the monty haul malady: Ahh, the joys of advancing too fast, and getting incredibly silly in the process. Something the vast majority of us did at some point, and there's nothing wrong with that. A short article in which Roger reminds us that when things have got too gonzo and overloaded, the best thing to do is start a new game, and learn from your mistakes, playing it differently this time. Very much a "we've got a couple of pages to fill, so lets whip up a half-assed reiteration of things we've said plenty of times before" piece. You can safely skip this and not feel you're missing anything.

Reviews: Battlemats and Megamats are useful devices for anyone who likes representing their game environments. Draw on them, then wipe them clean when you're done and start over again. Just another useful way of aiding the process of organizing your game, albeit at the cost of making your setup bulkier and more inconvenient to transport.
The dragonbone electronic dice wand is a mechanical substitute for dice. Set the type and hit roll for a random number. Unfortunately it fails to really take advantage of that and allow rolls like d13's. Still, if you want to play while walking around or something, it does have definite advantages over standard dice.
The fair shake dice device is another little device to prevent cheating from players. Drop it into the little gate tower, and it'll come out the drawbridge suitably randomized. Even d4's dropped from the same start position are dealt with reliably. Cute.
The d4 that rolls is an amusingly horror movie-esque title for what is essentially a D8 numbered from 1 to 4 twice. One of those cases where there's not much more to say apart from about time too.
Pavis: threshold to danger is a Runequest supplement. It details the city of new pavis, it's layout and history, and then gives us a bunch of adventures set in it. There is a certain amount of railroading in the scenarios, but apart from that, it's a high quality set that provides plenty of useful stuff without getting bogged down in extraneous padding.
Big Rubble is another runequest supplement, complementing the previous one. While Pavis described the new city, this covers the ruins surrounding it. Filled with both humanoids and monsters, it makes a great adventuring environment, with tons of things to do, people to meet, and stuff to loot. It includes 7 sample scenarios, many of which are quite RP heavy. So whether you like dungeoncrawling or plotted adventures, these two modules have enough to keep you busy for months of play.
City states of Arklyrell is a fantasy wargame. It gets a decidedly meh review, failing to distinguish itself from the many competitors. The wargaming equivalent of a fantasy heartbreaker, really.

Spells between the covers: Another author who would go onto become one of this magazine's most prolific contributors debuts here. Bruce Heard, author of the princess ark series and tons of other mystaran stuff, has now joined the freelancer pool. Here, he elaborates on the spell research process. Costs and odds of success, and how to modify them, and huge amounts of sample spellbooks. A topic that could be dull very easily. But thankfully isn't. Like Ed, he instantly stands out for his enormous knowledge of the existing D&D canon, and ability to fit new stuff into it seamlessly. Buying and selling magical books, the black market for spellbooks, two fisted research, the kind of stuff which makes the life of a working wizard rather more interesting than sitting at home rolling dice once a week or so. See, this is how you balance the demands of making a fun game in general with that of keeping things tricky for the researcher, so they can't just spend months holed away and then come out with a game breaking new spell. And it's all topped off with a sprinkling of new literary magical items. It's not the most entertainingly written article ever, but it's a huge improvement over all the previous attempts at this topic, particularly from an actual play perspective. Hopefully he'll soon iron out the little kinks in his writing style and produce plenty more awesome articles in the next few years.

Ohh. Dragonlance coming soon. One of those little teasers that's easy to miss at the time, but says a lot in retrospect. D&D's settings continue to build. How long before we see stuff appearing in the magazine on this? Not long, I'll bet.

Fiction: Windwolf by Earl S Wajenberg. Another of those stories that takes on an odd perspective, this time of a newly formed spirit who would grow to be a god. His birth, his early trials, spirit politics, and the inhumanity of man to nature in general. Some interesting thoughts, both in terms of plot and cosmology, are raised. Not quite a classic piece, but another enjoyable addition to what is turning out to be a pretty cool issue in general.

Dragonmirth continues to get things wrong.

Talanan: Another little comic. Say hello to the geekiest DM evar. See the size of his world. It'd take years to play through that. Another great example of how inconvenient having too much built up stuff to keep track of can be.

Snarfquest has a dragon that thinks it's a duck. Dixie stops being a dragon. Wormy talks about how to hunt a dragon. And makes some criminal puns in the process.

One of those issues that's not particularly significant in it's own right, but more for the things it heralds. Two significant writers, plus a gameline, there's definitely some stuff that was important with hindsight. Course, that doesn't really help us predict who's going to go on to greater things in the present, and who'll just sink into obscurity. Also interesting is just how much of this stuff is quickly and easily insertable into existing games. Seems they're really getting the hang of balancing the fluff details with the actual statistical information, without neglecting or messing up either. And we're still miles away from the point where they would start to concentrate on crunch to the detriment of setting details. For the moment, things look pretty bright.

Dragon Issue 83: March 1984

part 1/2

84 pages. Looks like 1984 is going to be a busy year full of changes. Having swallowed Little Wars, a long time ago, they're now eating up ARES magazine. Their attempt to relaunch SPI products must have bombed pretty badly for it to have died this quickly. This means they intend to increase their page count by at least 16 pages per issue, and fill that with more sci-fi stuff. Having seen how wargaming faded away after 1982 or so, I wonder how long this little incorporation'll last before being digested and forgotten about. Oh well, at least it means there'll be a reliable amount of non D&D stuff for me to read for the next year or two, even if it is being ghettoised. It's hardly a terrible development.

In this issue:

Out on a limb is rather short this issue: We have yet more psionics nitpicking from Robert M Schroek. Damn those unclear rules!
Lance J Purple (! Oh, long johnson, oh rodimus prime. Whyeyeyeyeyey?) asks for reprints. This time, they grant mercy, albeit of an expensive kind. Call Penny Petticord (Where do these people get their names from? I blame the parents. Do they not realize the consequences of what they are doing.) and she'll photocopy articles from out of print issues and send them to you. Well, it's certainly progress. I suppose that is to be lauded.
And finally, we get some questions about the 100 hour marathon D&D session, the procedures for the guinness records, and who to contact if you want to try and beat it. Toilet breaks are permitted, thankfully.

The forum is similarly undersize. Must not be a very debatable time: Scott D Hoffrage picks apart David Hutton's belief that dual classed fighter 1/whatevers are overpowered carefully and mercilessly. You've got tons of annoying restrictions to apply. Of course the character will seem overpowered if you forget them.
John Lester Jr nitpicks about the nature of contact poison. Ho hum.

The many facets of gems: Hmm. Starting off our features this month is a 10 page article about various types of gemstone. One of those things, like herbalism, ecology or fantasy languages, that's fascinating if you're into it, and interminably tedious if you're not. And on this particular subject, I'm afraid I must confess I fall into the not camp. Not to disparage the quality, or game-usefulness for those of you who want to challenge your PC's by setting them specific requirements for building their magical items. Or the rather good bibliography which shows that the author must have put a lot of work into this. But frankly, putting it as the leading article? If I were editor, there is no way that would have happened. Oh well, can't please all the people all of the time.

The ecology of the stirge: Ed contributes another ecology this month. Once again, he's stolen liberally from the biology of real life creatures, (love the bee reference in particular) and then remixed the details to make the stirge actually seem pretty plausible as a creature that could really exist, even without the aid of a mad wizard/genetic engineer to create it. He provides his usual selection of fascinating footnotes, and we have an increasing amount of game information which can be used to make encounters with the little bastards even more annoying. Which is definitely another positive development, as it encourages you to reuse the article, instead of just enjoying the fiction once, and then forgetting about it. See the benefits of actively thinking about what you've done and how to improve upon it. I very much approve, and hope our other contributors take note.  

Palladium prints praise from various magazines (and kevin's mom ) in it's latest advert, The arms of nargash tor. Also, we have naked faeries. That'll boost sales a bit more. He sure does know how to hustle. And lets face it, that's as important (if not more so, annoyingly) to a company as actually producing decent product.

Fiction: the test of the twins by Margaret Weis. Looks like another member of the gang is here now. Welcome to the very beginning of the Dragonlance saga. Say hello to Raistlin and Caramon, and see the dramatic tension that holds them together, and will ultimately drive them apart. All together now! All you need is AAAaaangst! (do do dodo do) Once again we see the beginning of a new style of D&D adventures, with a greater emphasis on drama, personalities and epic overarching struggles that define the fate of worlds and universes. Sure, it'll generate it's own crimes against common sense and literature soon enough, but for now, it's a breath of fresh air contasted against D&D's current flavour of swords and sorcery which alternates between didactic simulationism and gonzo crossovers. Lets enjoy it while we can, before the kender show up and ruin everything.

Dragon Issue 83: March 1984

part 2/2

The dancing hut: Baba Yaga! Talking of gonzo crossovers! Now this is a classic module. Breaking the usual 16 page limit, and featuring contributions from lots of TSR regulars, this is one of the most impressive, and also most annoying modules they ever produced. Enter the hut of baba yaga. It may seem small from the outside, but inside is an enormous extradimensional mansion that defies logic, and has enough weird stuff inside it to baffle and challenge the most hardened adventurers. Hack and slashers will have a hard time even into the upper teens, while smart lower level characters will be able to negotiate with the inhabitants and possibly come out ahead. This is the kind of adventure that could become the centrepiece of an entire campaign, especially if the PC's wind up working for Baba Yaga for whatever reason. (cue all kinds of fairy tale weirdness in the quests set.) Not only could you explore it for ages and still get lost easily, it can connect to various other dimensions, and introduce all sorts of interesting crossovers. This is definitely one of Dragon magazine's high points, that they obviously had huge amounts of fun designing and running. While not suitable for every campaign, I'm sure many of you have had scarring experiences with this one as well. As ever, actual play experiences are welcome.

How to finish fights faster: Roger gives another contribution in quick succession. Gary admits he's never been satisfied with the unarmed combat rules as presented in the DMG. So here's a quicker and easier version, which goes some way to making unarmed attacks more accessable, without sacrificing too many options. It's still pretty useless when up against anyone with real weapons and armour, but that's to be expected, really. At least now you can get into a bar brawl without it taking longer to resolve and involving more page flipping than a climactic boss battle. They are definitely producing more stuff that I could see myself using lately. Yet more evidence that properly patched AD&D v1.5 was quite a different beast to running the core rulebooks as written, and probably more fun, given the number of arcane oddities you needed to cut around.

A look at AOK's, old and new: Our token non-D&D article this month is another teaser for the Top Secret companion. And once again, they haven't chosen a very interesting way to present it. Five new areas of knowledge are introduced, bringing the total up to 42 (!) That's rather a lot of skills. Many designers these days actively avoid massive lists like that, as experience has shown that they are frequently actively detrimental to the fun factor of a game. And here they are engaging in lengthy pontification on exactly what you can do with each of them at different levels of skill as if that's something that will stoke people's enthusiasm for the game. Given the benefit of hindsight, I am forced to sigh and shake my head at this. Poor naive game designers, thinking that more is always better. Roger's realized this, but it'll take a while to catch on, and some people'll never get it. Ho hum.

Reviews: The James Bond, 007 rpg and it's current supplements get the spotlight on them this issue. The basic book swiftly explains how the game works in the first few pages, and then gives you plenty of specifics. It seems we have an early occurance of a universal resolution mechanic, as virtually everything is done by determining the difficulty, and then rolling on the same table to see how well you did. This of course makes it much easier to learn than D&D with it's tons of exceptions. On the negative side, that does mean you have to narratively define exactly what your degree of success or failure in an action means, which may take some getting used too. Still, given the fairly freewheeling nature of the source material, that seems entirely appropriate. It certainly contrasts pleasantly with the high crunch approach taken by Top Secret in the preceding article.
The Q manual is of course the gadget supplement. It keeps up the fairly rules light approach of the corebook, but describes the various devices with a level of dry wit that not only makes for good reading, but should help spark your imagination for the unorthodox uses each can be adapted to. After all, you can't carry everything without spoiling the line of your suit, so sometimes you'll just have to use your laser pen to clean out a clogged drain. And of course, you can steal and adapt these gadgets to other games as "magical items" So it's all good.
The gamesmaster pack gives you a chunky chart full GM screen and lots of other little tactile aids which should help you represent action sequences and stuff.  The kind of thing that you can take or leave, but certainly doesn't hurt.
And on top of that we already have several modules, with more supplements to come. Looks like they're doing pretty well at the moment.

Dragonmirth is a bit lopsided. Talanalan has a computer in his car. This is not as easy or useful as it would be these days. Wormy is wary of long-jawed mudsuckers, with good reason. What's new doesn't do sex in D&D because Phil wants to sleep. Typical. Snarfquest gets the treasure and the girl. Don't worry, things'll get complicated again for him soon.

A tricky issue to comment upon. One one hand, most of the articles in this issue are of very high quality, even the ones that aren't particularly to my taste. On the other hand, they seem to be going through one of their periods of advertising expansion, so the ratio of articles to adverts is not great, and I feel a bit unfulfilled, as if it was over too quickly. Then again, I still have hundreds of issues to go, so I guess I should be grateful that some of them are easy ones. And since from next month the average size will be increasing quite a bit, I expect there'll be quite a few ones that are a struggle to get through before we finish. So lets press onwards, see what strange new worlds ARES will bring to my attention. Once again 1984 is proving to be a very interesting and varied year for the people of TSR.

Baba Yaga  is one of their more faithful adaptations of traditional folklore. It's Russian folklore, tho', and not generally translated, because it really is that far out there. It's the stuff they used to scare little children with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga pretty much nails what my Russian reading covered. Now, just remeber, Баба Яга (Baba Yaga) is the stuff which was used for bedtime stories in pre-soviet russia....

Dragon Issue 84: April 1984

part 1/2

100 pages. No april fools stuff this year. They are slacking rather. But then, with the serious changes they're making to the magazine, they just don't have the right mood, or the energy. The death of one of your sister magazines is not the kind of thing you laugh at. You never know when your own fortunes could decline suddenly and before you know it you're the next on the chopping block.

In this issue:

Out on a limb: A letter pointing out that the peryton in the MM is described as having claws, while the one in the Ecology article has hooves. They reply that they did that diliberately just to annoy pedants like him. They've learned from the gem dragon debacle. So canon be damned. Having hooves makes them even weirder, so why not.
A letter asking if the stuff from the dragonquest article could be adapted to D&D. They reply sure, you can convert anything from any system to another. Fundamental ideas generally retain their strength (or weakness) no matter what you do with them.  
Some errata on sleep gas. It's still nasty, but less so now the error is removed.
A letter grumbling about how out on a limb ain't what it used ta be. Why make the forum? Things were fine before. grumble mutter grumble darn kids getoffa ma lawn.
Two letters pointing out errors in recent modules. Here we go again. An editors job is a thankless task. Ignored when you do things right, and yelled at when you do things wrong.

The forum: Edward R Masters pontificates about the nonsensibility of the various elemental planes. Oh, don't be such a pessimist. Yeah, if you change one bit of the physics, you have to keep changing other bits, until things all add up again. But that does not make them inherently unsolvable or unadventurable. Put a can do face on! And sing a happy song! You'll get nowhere if you never start because you think it'll always go wrong!
Peter Bregoli thinks the forum as it stands is all together too focused on grumbling about things that are wrong. We ought to talk about our cool ideas more. That's the spirit lad.
Ken Hughes thinks that the combat charts are unneccacary. We ought to just figure out what bonuses a character has, and roll against the enemy AC. Maybe we should even flip around the AC system so higher is always better, and the whole thing becomes more intuitive. Radical ideas man! They'll never catch on.
Bill Cavalier thinks Dragon ought to do more articles on the various conventions. They're the lifeblood of the hobby, after all. Yes, I do recall when they had extensive articles on the introduction of the giant modules to the conventions. Obviously, you can't innovate like that every year, but that doesn't stop you from talking about what it was like, the cool stuff you saw, and so forth. They've made interesting articles about that in the past, and they could do so again.
Jeff Naiman has some commentary and suggestions on the poison article from issue 81. What benefit is neutralize poison when the victim is dead straight away.

A cast of strange familiars: Yup, It's time for wizard's oft-neglected animal companions to get an article examining them. What creatures are suitable, how should they be statted out, what special powers and limitations should they have. We get a reiteration of the deadliness of housecats and other small animals in D&D, and an attempt to fix this. We also get a look at the problem of falling damage
 for big and small creatures, and an attempt to fix that as well. In short this is an intelligent and considered article that would be dull if not for this wry eye toward the absurdities of the D&D system making it likable. It could definitely have done more to expand on the system, rather than just examining it, though. A rather mixed way to start off the issue.

The ecology of the trapper: Hmm, said Edward Greenwood. What shall I send in to Dragon this month? Time is a-passing, and Elminster hasn't shown up to disrupt things for a while. I know! Another ecology. That's always good for a sale, and I can whip them up in my sleep by now. Don't I just have the coolest job in the world. And so another of the strange creatures inhabiting D&D dungeons had it's lifecycle intimately probed in the name of Science! This of course involves questioning unsavory and cantankerous characters, as such monsters do not sit still to be investigated. But if he can wheedle usable information out of Elminster, everyone else should be child's play by comparison. ( I wonder if we will see an ecology of the doll golem at some point? ) This is another well-written article from the master of worldbuilding, with plenty of detail in both the flavour and the game information sections. The amount of footnotes continues to grow, this time they actually cover more space than the fiction itself. This always happens, doesn't it. When someone has a good idea, it expands rapidly until it outgrows it's welcome, and then has to be shrunk back down again until it reaches a good balance with everything else again. Funny to think the series has only been around for a year, and is in some ways still finding it's feet like that. It already seems like one of the indispensable parts of the magazine. Now we just have to worry about running out of monsters to cover.

Figure feature: This month's featured models are a bunch of atlantean guards, a sultan on a magic carpet, a naga, a bunch of orcs, Bast, a centaur, A knight riding a boar, a wizard riding a dragon, and some weird alien creatures. Nothing too out of the ordinary then.

Off the shelf: The sleeping dragon by Joel Rosenberg transports ordinary students into their own RPG game, where they have to master the skills of their characters if they want to survive. Not the most original idea, but executed well in this case.
The Aquiliad by Somtow Sucharitkul is another of his alternate history books. What would happen if rome conquered America? It probably wouldn't turn out quite like this, but it's still a punfully entertaining romp through all manner of fantastical occurrances. Caught between mad emperors, and an equally mad reality, the protagonist has to try and survive and carry out his mad orders, with a little help from his friends.
The war for eternity by Christopher Rowley is another "immortality drug is discovered, ugly resource wars happen" book. Moral issues are raised, humanity behaves in inhumane ways to itself and others, and the aliens get plenty of interesting characterization (which is probably more sympathetic than the humans get) as well.
The man in the tree by Damon Knight is a story of a man with the power to transport things from other dimensions, and how he reluctantly grows into the messiah he really doesn't want to be. Religion and social responsibility are funny things, and this looks at both of them with an insightful eye.
Escape Velocity by Christopher Stasheff is a prequel to his Warlock books. His tongue is firmly in cheek as his protagonists bounce from dimension to dimension, experiencing increasingly insane adventures.
The mirror of helen by Richard Purtill is a book about Helen of Troy. Sure, she might have been the most beautiful woman in ancient history, but what was the person behind the face like? This tells her story from the viewpoint of the people around her, throwing new angles on the myth in a way similar to Marion Zimmer Bradley's retelling of arthurian legend. Which is neither a bad idea, or badly done.
Alanna: the first adventure by Tamora Pierce is a kid friendly fantasy adventure obviously aimed at hooking younger readers (get 'em young, and they're yours for life, as the smoking companies say. ) In that role, it serves perfectly well, with a fast paced plot, and simple but well defined characters. Give it to your kids for christmas or something.
The dragon waiting by John M Ford gets our token slating this month. A retelling of the story of Richard III from different perspectives, it jumps between it's characters in an abrupt manner, and the pretty descriptions don't really add up to much plotwise. You've gotta have a purpose beyond just writing for writings sake.
The wild shore by Kim Stanley Robinson is a story of postapocalypic america. They managed to piss of the rest of the world enough that they got bombed into the dark ages, and are now watched and prevented from developing new infrastructure. My, how topical that would have seemed a few months ago. And it will probably seem so again sometime, since these things tend to come in cycles.

I find it interesting that someone was calling for more convention coverage in the Forum. I honestly can't recall anything about Dragon's convention coverage, but I remember enjoying accounts from various scifi conventions that would show up here and there in various magazines. Still, it wasn't until the advent of podcasting that such coverage came into its own.

Nowadays one can expect to see video podcasts from various sources covering big cons like Comic Con in San Diego, the E3 game show in L.A., and PAX. Audio podcasts are even more numerous, and cover less well-known cons, and even GenCon. GenCon hasn't been as well-covered as I would have expected in the past, but I'm hoping to see some good coverage this year. I haven't seen much of anything as far as video podcasts from GenCon (some Gamer Zero stuff from a couple years back is all I can recall), and I hope it doesn't have to wait for the Totally Rad Show guys (who are also pencil & paper RPG fans, at least one of them from a good ways back), Penny Arcade, or iFanboy to shift their focus to RPG cons some year. It would be nice to see a solid, RPG-focused video podcast appear (or at least make itself known to me).

I also find it interesting that you're enjoying Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of" articles. I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Greenwood's writing. I clearly recall skipping over just about everything of his that wasn't "Pages from the Mages" or the "swords" articles. More specifically, I found myself bored by the ecology articles early on. Most, if not all, of them took away rather than lent any mystery or interest to their subjects, and a lot of the articles eventually became more about the framing story than the critters, in my opinion.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;319882I find it interesting that someone was calling for more convention coverage in the Forum. I honestly can't recall anything about Dragon's convention coverage, but I remember enjoying accounts from various scifi conventions that would show up here and there in various magazines. Still, it wasn't until the advent of podcasting that such coverage came into its own.  

Nowadays one can expect to see video podcasts from various sources covering big cons like Comic Con in San Diego, the E3 game show in L.A., and PAX. Audio podcasts are even more numerous, and cover less well-known cons, and even GenCon. GenCon hasn't been as well-covered as I would have expected in the past, but I'm hoping to see some good coverage this year. I haven't seen much of anything as far as video podcasts from GenCon (some Gamer Zero stuff from a couple years back is all I can recall), and I hope it doesn't have to wait for the Totally Rad Show guys (who are also pencil & paper RPG fans, at least one of them from a good ways back), Penny Arcade, or iFanboy to shift their focus to RPG cons some year. It would be nice to see a solid, RPG-focused video podcast appear (or at least make itself known to me).

I seem to remember there being a bit more of that stuff in the 90's, but usually, it's just a few pages of listing in the back. Like forums themselves, this kind of thing improves dramatically once you get rid of the bandwidth limitations and don't have people screening the stuff before it even gets published.

QuoteI also find it interesting that you're enjoying Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of" articles. I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Greenwood's writing. I clearly recall skipping over just about everything of his that wasn't "Pages from the Mages" or the "swords" articles.

Different strokes, as usual. While not perfect, Ed does seem to be able to interest me even when tackling topics that any other writer would bore me with. I definitely have more appreciation for his talents than when I started doing this thread.

QuoteMore specifically, I found myself bored by the ecology articles early on. Most, if not all, of them took away rather than lent any mystery or interest to their subjects, and a lot of the articles eventually became more about the framing story than the critters, in my opinion.

Ahh yes, the excesses of the late 90's, when the monster hunter's association and their not very effectual antics became a regular appearance. It's gonna take quite a while to reach that little thread of history.

Dragon Issue 84: April 1984

part 2/2

Never the same thing twice: Rakshasas. One of the scariest and most flavourfull monsters in the game, thanks to their brutal resistances and highly customisable powers. Scott Bennie looks at them, and their mythical inspirations. Obviously, D&D couldn't fit them all into a single monster, but it actually hasn't done too bad a job this time at converting them to a coherent gameable form. Like Lunars, their reputation as illusionists somewhat exceeds the reality, and is based largely on their ability to disguise themselves. Still, if you enjoyed deceiving people, that kind of misrepresentation and manipulation is exactly what you'd do as well. We also get a load of new crunch in the form of two variant high power rakshasas, and their god, Ravanna. Another of those cases where the game, and it's foibles are illuminated, while still providing some useful and interesting stuff. And more evidence of their ability to better balance fluff and crunch. Which is cool.

And then there were three: At last, the companion set. Frank Mentzer gives us a teaser for the players book of the high level. We also get the first mention of the fifth set to cover play beyond 36th level. Immortal level is on its way. Nice to see someone likes the idea of really high level play. Funny how BD&D ended up catering to that style so much better than AD&D. Anyway, he talks about settling down and building strongholds for the various classes, the new variant classes such as druids and paladins, and the interesting workaround demihumans get so they still improve after reaching maximum level, unarmed combat, and demihuman magic items. We see the odd mix of simplification, and putting his own spin on things from AD&D that these sets would contain. Like the top secret teasers, they definitely need to work on their selling technique. They're still a far cry from the well presented and paced reveals that the 3rd and 4th edition runups had.

The twofold talisman: Another extra long adventure is detailed in these pages. However, as they just did a big one and doing that two issues in a row would probably result in complaints, they split it into two parts, putting 12 pages here, with the conclusion coming next month. This is very much a tournament module, with pregenerated characters, annoying fakeouts designed specifically to screw with player expectations, stupid jokes, (damn you monty python :shakes fist:) and no sense of realism to the environment at all. You should expect to die repeatedly and in very infuriating ways. Use with caution, for running it with your regular characters may result in very pissed off players.

Fiction: Master of the winds by Sharon Lee. Another of those tales of testing the apprentice wizard, psychodrama stylee. We had one of those just last issue. Guess they're like busses. Don't see them for years, and suddenly a whole bunch of them come along at once. Thankfully the protagonist is a rather more pleasant character than Raistlin. Although her rival is not, and actually has quite a lot of parallels with him, which I find very amusing. This time, the good guys win, and the future looks fairly positive. Which is more than we can say for Krynn, with it's endless litany of narrowly averted world destroying disasters ahead. But enough about that. On it's own merits, this is another likable but unexceptional piece of fiction to read, enjoy and then use as inspiration for your own magical seekings, or just forget about, as you choose.

Reviews: Secrets of the labyrinth is part two of the thieves guild stuff on the free city of haven. Annoyingly, they've dropped the loose-leaf format in the middle of the series, so you can no longer assemble the books into one bigger one when they're all out. It also requires quite a bit of buy-in to the gameline in general, due to lots of references to rules from other supplements. If you already like the gameline though, it's another solid addition to it, with plenty of setting details and adventure ideas.
Chivalry & sorcery's new edition attempts to be more accessable than before. It may be an improvement, but it's certainly not enough of one, and their editing process leaves quite a bit to be desired. It's still a game with tremendous depth, possibly even more so than before. If you're an expert gamer who wants a better treatment of the medieval mileu than D&D can provide, try this.
The mentzer ed D&D basic & expert sets also get a sycophanticly positive "review" This really does feel like a pure shill piece, with all the comments positive, and great attention paid on how friendly they are to new gamers. As much as I do like those same sets, I'm still pretty suspicious of this review. I understand that you want to sell your game, but you could at least pretend to be objective a bit better.

Are's section.

Are's log: So sci-fi is back in Dragon. This is pleasing, even if the method by which it returned isn't. Then again, they didn't have to do this. They could have just let the magazine die entirely. And at least this time they're transferring the subscriptions properly. Similarly, it looks like at least a few of the staff from the magazine have been transferred over as well. It's almost like a separate mini magazine. Which also means Roger gets to hone his editorial skills before he gets to take on a whole magazine on his own. So what have they got to offer. They've only got 16 pages to play with. Will they make the most of them? Lets take a look and see.

The lunar high republic: Well, it looks like they haven't abandoned their ambitions, in any case. They're planning on doing a series of pieces on the moon in various game universes and future histories. Just how many ways can an airless lump of white rock be developed? I'm betting quite a few. First up is the moon of the Space Opera game. Having been repressed by earth in it's early year, it rebelled, and is now fiercely independent, despite the infrastructure needed for survival. Dueling is an entirely de rigeur means of settling disagreements, and the generally pretty liberal laws are enforced fast and without ceremony. It all seems a bit of a mary sue writeup, really, as the author goes to pains to make it clear how much better things are than on earth in almost every respect. If this was an in-game perspective, this would be forgivable, but as a supposedly objective write-up, this makes me suspicious. Is this typical of the game's attitude in general, or a flaw of this writer in particular?

The zethra: Oh no! said Edward Greenwood. They have cancelled Ares magazine. Whatever shall I do now?! I can't write nothing but D&D stuff all the time, I'd go quite mad. And what's going to happen to the article I sent in just last month? Don't say it's just going to be lost forever. Don't worry, said Roger Moore. We wouldn't let you down like that. We've saved it, and we'll publish it in Dragon Magazine. Hooray! said Edward Greenwood. You guys are the best friends ever. And so everyone was happy again, and they all went and had pancakes with maple syrup for tea.
Anyway, where was I. The zethra are weird tentacled blob things. Seems like one of the standard sci-fi things people come up with when trying to get away from the standard humanoid body model. These ones come from the Xagyg ( ) cluster, and shoot energy bolts. I'm really not enthralled, as they have an air of self-concious wackiness about them. When told to say something random, the average person will say Fish! Bad taste is represented by combining purple and green, and the random number is usually 7. So decorate the amorphous blob's room with 7 little flying fish models painted green with purple spots, and you have the wackiest setup ever. Malkav would be proud.

Starfire, gaming x3: Oh, now this is more like it. 3 quick sets of optional rules to include or not, as you see fit. Rules to speed up the movement process, and allow for simultaneous actions. That'll certainly ramp up the drama. Rules for facing and the advantage you get for catching someone from the rear. Hee. And if you want something a little more complicated, you can introduce 3d positioning, including the pythagorean mathematics needed to determine diagonal distances. Ai carumba. I think I'll pass on that one. Still this is a useful little set of ideas, and it's nice to see non RPG's get some small amount of coverage again. I've found this the most likable of the articles in the section. It's the only one that doesn't seem to be trying too hard. Lets hope they settle in soon. It might be a bit cramped, but at least it's homey and the companies good.

Snarfquest does some shapeshifting. What's new gets fired. Well, at least they go out with a bang, very literally, as that means it's time for sex in D&D. We also get a proper postscript. Talanan goes monty haul. Wormy reveals the dark side of wargaming with real figures and long postage times. They really oughta get proper life insurance for this. What are raise spells for, otherwise.

A nice full colour advert for D1:Dragons of dispair. Looks like they're going to push this one hard. They already have the flashy logo for the world done.

And once again dragon magazine goes through some substantial changes this issue, mostly for the better. The ares section might have got off to a shaky start, but it's still a very interesting development, and I look forward to seeing what they have to offer over the next couple of years. Hopefully things'll settle down for a bit after the madness of the last few months. If the format changed every month, it could hardly be called a format. I guess it's more interesting than things being essentially the same for years though.

Dragon Issue 85: May 1984

part 1/2

100 pages. Looks like it's another cleric special. I guess the whole merry-go round of class and race specials will start up again in the following months. They can't leave a topic like that as a one-off. Speaking of one-offs, once again we run into the nothing new in the world problem. They publish reviews of things billed as unique, and next thing you know, other people write-in to say they've been doing that for years. Suitably chastened, they say they won't do that again. Meanwhile, Ken Rolston and Katherine Kerr get jobs as contributing editors. Once again, the quality and quantity of their top writer's outputs have been recognized and rewarded. Which means we get to see even more of them. Hopefully there'll still be room for untried freelancers to get a foot in the door. After all, they've got a big magazine to fill every month. So lets get going. Even with Ken around, the magazine won't review itself.

In this issue:

Out on a limb: A letter asking about copyright, and what exactly they can do with the material in Dragon. They are in magnanimous mood today and reply that as long as you don't sell it, they don't have a problem.
Two letters about the new unarmed combat rules and monks. Again, duly answered.
A question about pineal glands, and their use as spell components.
Some questions about baba yaga's hut.
A letter pointing out that one of the pregen characters in the twofold talisman is illegal. Honestly. Ordinary players get this right more often than RPG writers. It's quite shocking.
Two letters on the familiars article last month. My, their response time is pretty prompt these days. I remember when it took 3 months to start getting any feedback on an article.
A question on how international peeps are supposed to provide a usable SASE, when their stamps aren't legal tender in america. They reply that you need an international reply coupon, whatever the hell that is. Ahh, the arcane details of international commerce.

The forum: Jon Paulson complains at Ken Rolston for putting spoilers in his CoC review. Now he can't run it for his players. Ken apologizes and says he'll try and tread the line better next time. Yet another case of nothing new in the world.
Katherine Kerr rebutts Nikki Purdues statement that life for serfs didn't suck. While adventurers are off slaying dragons, they have to grub in the dirt on the edge of starvation. Woe! Woe! Give generously to the people still starving in africa today. Let them know it's christmas time. Oh wait. A bit early for that, isn't it.
Jeffrey Carey makes contributions to the playability of the elemental planes, pointing out that the genie races live there, so there must be parts which have coherent spacial structures and little bits of other elements. Someone with the right magical tricks really ought to be able to survive and get around there, and there can be all kinds of weird variations on a theme in an infinite universe.
Finally, Flex Williams points out how some nasty things, like nitric acid, can cause huge amounts of damage on contact and not be noticed immediately. Fantasy contact poisons could do even more unpleasant stuff without it hurting verisimilitude.

Here's to your health: Ahh, healbotting. One of the primary uses of clerics. If you don't have one, you had to spend weeks or months recuperating at higher levels back then. Which is a lot more realistic than 3rd or 4th edition, weirdly enough. I have to say that I never approached it like that back then. Partially it was that you didn't get spells until second level anyway, and we never memorized more than one copy of the same spell for reasons of versatility. So while we'd generally have a spell ready for when someone was about to die, that was the cue to get into defensive formation, and we certainly didn't expect to face each battle at full strength. But enough about my experiences. They're at the centre of the D&D experience. Of course they're going to have been hothoused into the mechanically optimal path more than the rest of us.
In this article, Kim tackles the nature of healing magic, how it works, what it's limitations are, and yes indeed, the question of if clerics should double dip on healing spells and focus on healbotting at the expense of all the other cool tricks they can pull. Should you reveal exactly how much damage is healed by each spell, and allow for metagaming. Should the deity served dictate or influence their clerics spell selection. Would any player be prepared to pay the extortionate prices that NPC clerics charge for healing. Like his examination of psionics, this is a fairly dull article that doesn't have that much that is useful in actual play either. But he's the chief editor, so it gets to be in pole position anyway. Mehness.

Special skills, special thrills: Our other editor makes the second contribution. Talk about keeping it in-house. Anyway, Roger gives us a rather more useful piece of work, talking about making clerics of different deities different. He refers back to the greyhawk god articles in issues 67-71, and then expands upon and rebalances them, so they don't just get special powers for nothing, and some gods end up way better choices than others. This is a very useful article indeed, and an obvious precursor to the sphere systems of subsequent editions. It should provide more than enough examples to allow you to do the same for your own gods, and if used, allows clerics a lot more customisability. An all cleric party would still probably be a bit of a stretch, but less so than keeping an all fighter team interesting and effective. Plus you get plenty of amusing role-playing opportunities. I very much approve

Clerics must be deity-bound: Talking of roleplaying clerics of different gods appropriately. Here's a load of advice on just that. They are predictable. Thankfully this is a quick one that doesn't outstay it's welcome, and has plenty of important points. Gods of the same alignments can have very different portfolios, and gods with similar portfolios can be bitter rivals and enemies. Clerics can have various degrees of devotion to their gods ideals, ranging from fanatical devotion, to propitiation out of fear or self interest. Deity drama is another one of those bits of worldbuilding that's often left out, but adds quite a bit to your game if you include it. After all, legends like that can be turned into instant plot hooks. A nice way to finish of the themed section.

Figure feature is only a single page long this time. This month, we get the elfquest characters made into mini's, plus some various lizardy monsters and weird things. Rather a filler article really.

A new edition of starfire? Interesting. That's been one of their regular games to review. I wonder what they'll think about it this time.

Problems by mail: Scammers, flakes, neurotics, asshat twink players, rapid and expensive edition changes. Just a few of the ways that your PbM experience can be ruined, and you can wind up wasting substantial sums of money. Not that it's easy on the other end either. Processing all the info from hundreds of letters takes quite a bit of work. But that does not excuse unprofessionalism. You ought to do the research and get the resources before you get in the kitchen. So Rick Loomis is setting up an organization that will examine PBM companies, and make sure they're up to scratch in terms of professionalism. If you're scammed, complain to them, and they'll make sure word gets around. That way, the good can flourish, the bad can perish, and capitalism can continue on it's merry way. Hooray! Well, that's good to know, anyway. Hard to argue with the idea, although I know that the implementation of these things can become unpleasantly bureaucratic. Another interesting footnote in the history of gaming as a whole that I wonder if we'll hear any more about.

The ecology of the ixitachitl (I hope I spelled that right): Ed gives us another ecology, tackling the demogorgon worshipping manta rays. While intelligent, they do not think remotely like humanoids, given their drastically different environment, lifestyle, and physiology. And despite not having hands, their magical abilities and vampiric rulers make them quite capable of being allmighty pains in the ass to other undersea creatures. For a second time, the amount of footnotes exceeds the amount of actual description, and contains extensive rules clarifications and suggestions. And of course, a guide on how to pronounce their dreadfully annoying name. While the game information is exemplary, the fiction on this one is a bit dull, as if Ed was on cruise control when he wrote it. Still, even an average Ed article is well above the general average in terms of overall quality.

Fiction: Valkyrie settlement by Susan Shwartz. Honor and valor come in many forms. And as important as knowing when and how to fight is knowing when not to fight. Sometimes oaths have to be broken. Sometimes losing with style can be better for you in the long run than winning at any cost. In short, things aren't always black and white, even in a proud warrior culture. This is a pretty cool bit of fiction, that manages to incorporate historical and supernatural stuff, cool fight scenes, and gender politics. Amazing how much depth some people can fit into these little stories.

Three cheers for beowulf: Like they did for bounty hunters, they make another attempt at reminding us the D&D isn't all one true way by presenting us with three different versions of his stats. While always a fighter with ridiculously high strength, his level and other stats vary in their twinkedness between incarnations. As ever, he has powers PC's can't match, and may overshadow them if included in a game. As a thought exercise, and a demonstration of how different writers can interpret the same material, this is quite interesting. As something that's useful for an actual game, not so much. Like so much of the GitE material, this winds up leaving a bad taste in my mouth.