Dragon Issue 113: September 1986

part 1/3

111 pages. Kim would like to apologize for any slipshod editing in recent, and the next few issues. He has a good excuse this time, as he's been splitting his attention, to do his first proper hardback book for AD&D. The wilderness survival guide. He's learned more about the open air while sitting in front of a computer screen than any man should. You ought to watch out. You'll burn yourself out, doing double shifts like that. Anyway, back to the new Dragon. Lets see if they can maintain the momentum of their reboot.

In this issue:

Letters: Only one letter this month, asking about the viability of Ranger/thieves when they have conflicting alignment requirements. Roger Moore takes the role of justifier this issue, with a very long answer. One of the pleasures of being editor is being able to actively alter the articles sent in, not just fixing up things like spelling and cutting for size, but also changing the rules and adding new bits based upon what he would like to see in the magazine. Yes, this may sometimes annoy the original author, but that's something he's willing to live with. Strong editorial control is good for a gameline. Otherwise, we end up with an inconsistent kitchen sink. And those spill all over the place when you try and do the washing in them Another interesting, and possibly controversial look at the mindset of the people behind the scenes.

The forum gets it's rules and code of conduct revised this month. Please try and keep entries to 250 words or less, you must remember to include your name and address, stick to one topic per letter, no personal attacks, be polite, we reserve the right to edit letters. How very tiresome. Guess they were getting too many people sending in vitriol unprintable in a family friendly magazine. Once again, I am very glad for the rise of the internet. There, you don't usually get censored until after people have had a chance to see what you have to say. Anyway, back to the pontification.
Bruce Lowekamp thinks that Len Lakofka's system for animal aging doesn't really add up. The idea isn't bad, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Isn't that what I've been saying quite regularly?
Ralph Sizer returns to further clarify Locals aren't all yokels, and discredit the strawman attacks against him. Given the nature of the D&D system, there have to be a decent amount of high level characters around for the society to work as it does. If you don't include that level of realism and internal consistency, you're just creating problems for yourself along the line.
Mike Johnson gives us a load of clarifications about how underwater diving works. Seems like that happens whenever they cover a real world topic in anything less than exhaustive detail. Yawn.
Danny Kretzer is very much in support of Unearthed Arcana. It's not just new races and classes, it's tons of spells, weapons and items as well. There's something for everyone. Even if you already have most of this stuff from the magazine, it's more than worth it so you don't have to drag all those issues to the group and find the right pages in the right one all the time. You ought to reconsider about not buying it, Scott Maykrantz.
Jeff Klein thinks that the limitations on the D&D spellcasting system are perfectly sensical in terms of what the various attributes represent in the world. People should stop trying to pick them apart and just get on with enjoying the game.
Thomas Kane is not in favour of a world where magic is commonly used in a technological fashion to transform society. If things are too comfortable, where's the motivation to adventure? Every solution creates new problems, my dear. There are plot hooks aplenty to be found in magitech worlds.
Corey Ehmke is suffering from a dreadful case of badwrongfun. His players are playing monty haul games and enjoying them more than they are his. You've got to help me, before I lose them all and can't GM at all! See, this is the problem. Fun is the most important aspect of a game, not depth, craft, consistency or fairness. If it's not fun, all the effort you put into the other aspects is pointless. Harsh truth of the entertainment industry, as homemade youtube videos so aptly demonstrate.

Welcome to hades: Yay! Another bumper sized planar article. It's been way too long since we had one of those. This presents a quite different view of the place to that used in planescape, focussing almost entirely on the greek portion of the plane. It is a pretty miserable place, full of suffering souls and fiendish creatures on their own inscrutable and often pointless tasks. But is certainly isn't the grey, all crushing nightmare of depression that it would later turn into. Anthraxus is still in charge of the daemons, who still live here full time. Healing magic simply doesn't work. Once again, a huge chunk of the article is devoted to spell by spell listings of their changes (they really have got to change that, they just don't have the space, especially now UA is out.) All in all, the place is both less playable, and less distinctive than it would later become. While not as annoying to me as the Gladsheim article ( because there's not as much crap railroading DM admonitions), this once again suffers from the problem of making an entire universe seem tiny and focussed around just a few characters and locations. This is another definite disappointment compared to the great ideas of the earlier ones on the astral and hells. What is up with that? This is no good at all.

A capital idea: Setting up a business. Not the most obvious route for an adventurer. There are several ways you can keep this fun. You can treat this as something they do between adventures, leaving the day to day operations in the hands of someone else, and letting a few rolls determine how it grows or shrinks. You can handle it like domain management, and the systems probably ought to be compatible, as they are doing similar things over similar timescales. Or you can handle it the two-fisted way, hunting down contracts and big scoops personally, going out and prospecting for new sources of revenue, and generally doing for your profession what indiana jones does for archaeology. Any of those can be fun. What probably will not be fun is determining expenditures and income on a day to day basis by calculating the population of the neighboring region, and what proportion are likely to be interested in your product, cost of buying wholesale, pay for workers, optimum price for selling to get profit without driving them away to cheaper rivals, etc etc. And unfortunately, this article suggests doing exactly that. Epic fail. Not the kind of thing I want anywhere near my escapism, thank you very much.

Dragon Issue 113: September 1986

part 2/3

The role of books: The norby chronicles by Janet and Isaac Asimov is a set of tales about a very special robot, and the troubles he gets himself into. It puts a lighter slant on Asimovs famous robot stories, oriented towards younger readers, without sacrificing the underlying philosophical points his other books make. Hopefully it'll havedrawn in some new readers who go on to sample the rest of his marvelous canon.
The curse of the giant hogweed by Charlotte MacLeod takes a character more used to mundane mysteries into a fantasy world, and trying to maintain his logical attitude in the face of witches, shapeshifted creatures, and of course, giant hogweed. It maintains a sense of humour without making the characters seem ridiculous.
Dreadnought! by Diane Carey is a star trek novel about the aforementioned class of ships, hinted at in the technical manuals, but never shown on screen. It shows a general strong respect for the canon of the series, and tying everything together, while maintaining a fast paced plot. In general, the reviewer is pretty positive about it.
Heroes in hell by Janet Morris et all is an attempt to jump on the shared world bandwagon that currently seems to be on the up. However, without a strong setting bible and editorial control, it fails to create a consistent world between the stories. And without that, what really is the point? Even big name writers produce less than the sum of their parts if not properly co-ordinated.
The duchess of kneedeep by Atanielle Annyn Noel is a playful and punful tale of marital strife that manages to put plenty of depth and drama into the plot without resorting to violence every other chapter. She even manages to slip in reference to another Dragon alumnus. I find myself rather tempted.
The hounds of the morrigan by Pat O'Shea is a book I loved as a kid. It steals liberally from celtic myth to create an incredibly detailed and surprisingly contemporary book that you don't need to have read the original legends to enjoy. Like Tolkien's opus, this was produced over a huge timescale, and comes strongly recommended.
The dream palace by Brynne Stephens tries to push the amount of depth in the choose your own adventure genre. Of course, you have to make sacrifices, and rather than making the book huge, they decided to reduce the number of viable paths you can take to get to the end. The level of commercialism in the competition at the end is also a bit galling.

The tales people tell: Y'know, the real world manages to have weird enough folklore without any proven supernatural stuff. Why shouldn't fantasy worlds have outlandish legends that aren't true. It might irritate players when they've trekked through the wilderness for months seeking a plot hook, and they find out

Spoiler

the black pearl is just a big pearl, no magic powers at all

but it'll make the world more real. An excellent idea, but of course one that requires lots of prep time, or the willingness to steal and adapt from existing sources. Guess you'll have to choose if you're willing to put that kind of effort in for something that would cause player walkouts with the wrong group. And make sure that the journey is a fun part of the game as much achieving as the objectives. So this is an article I'm divided on, liking the idea, but knowing many people wouldn't. Oh well. Can't please everyone.

Magic and Morality: Mike Gray contributes this month's computer feature, an exceedingly positive review of Ultima IV. Like Rogue, this comes far closer to simulating the D&D experience than most CRPG's, allowing you a good deal of freedom, both in the objectives you pursue and order in which you do them, and also in your moral position. While you are supposed to be good if you want to win the game, you can choose to be a bad guy instead and the game won't railroad you  away from it. You have to experiment with mixing up ingredients to produce spells, make real moral choices, talk to everyone, and explore everywhere. It also includes some nice little extras, like a proper cloth map and lots of booklets that it really will help you to read before playing. Another great reminder that there were plenty of cool games back then, quite a few that did things that most games now don't do, because it was so much easier and cheaper to develop games and so designers had more leeway to experiment with them. And now you can get most of them for free via emulators and roms. (not that I endorse illegal downloading, of course) Indulge your nostalgia. Go play.

Clout for clerics: Like they've done with fighters and rangers recently, it's now cleric's turn to get their follower tables examined and expanded. This article takes a slightly different tack to the previous two, eschewing tables to instead embed the rules stuff directly into the prose. They are slightly more generous than the core rules, but as much of the followers are embedded into the community around your temple, and none are more than half your level, this isn't going to be adventure breaking. This does tack on a bunch of new rules which aren't related to the general domain management system, which may be problematic if you try and use them both at once. Such is the problem with inventing new subsystems. You'll have to pick and stick with one.

A saddle isn't enough: Hmm. For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a messenger was lost. For want of a messenger, an army wasn't ready when the enemies came knocking on the king's castle and the country was lost. Or in this case, the stirrup. Funny how such an innocuous looking device can prove so important. That annoying elves like Legolas can ride bareback and still kick much ass on the field of battle without falling off becomes a good deal more impressive when you actually know a little about the technical side of riding. It's minutinae, but minutinae I didn't know about before, so this manages to hold my interest this time around. If you're playing a gritty game, you would do well to heed it, and thereby frustrate your players when caught improperly prepared. Muahahaha.

Combat complexity: An article for the Conan rpg. Another case where it's been out for a few years, yet the magazine has paid no attention to it before. Guess even though the Ares section is gone, they still want to give non D&D games decent coverage, so a little more general fantasy doesn't go amiss. Anyway, this introduces one of our perennial topics. Hit locations. Seems if a game doesn't include them (and many don't, as they can introduce a lot of extra complexity.) someone'll create optional rules for them. Thankfully, they manage to keep things fairly simple, and curiously enough, the system seems more friendly to the idea than D&D anyway. It also seems pretty brutal, but thems the breaks. Nothing particularly ground-breaking here.

Cardboard dragon: Another interesting experiment is this month's centerpiece. We saw an example of Dennis Kaufman's excellent origami work on the cover of issue 100. Now, he brings you your own cardboard dragon assembly kit. Cut out the various bits and pieces, fold them up and glue them together, and hey presto, an embarrassing mess that doesn't look anything like as good as the photos in the magazine Joking aside, this is another pretty cool idea. Hopefully at least a few of you managed to put it together and keep it intact for a few years. What toys will they come up next? Lets hope that with modules gone we'll be seeing a few more of those fun little complete games Tom Wham and C C Stoll used to give us.

Bubba the barbarian says "Don't eat Quiche!" Subscribe to Dungeon before it's even out! How nice of them. Now you can make sure you get every issue, right from the ground floor. Lets hope there are some more people who took them up on that, because our dungeon magazine reviews stalled ages ago, and I really would like it if someone would pick them up again and try and keep pace with me, now I've reached that era.

Dragon Issue 113: September 1986

part 3/3

TSR Previews is once again the wrong way around. D&D gets DA1: Adventures in Blackmoor. Dave Arneson is back, and he's bad! How did that work? Gary's embroiled in mad political crap, and the other founder is allowed to return. Hmm. I would rather like to know more about the behind the scenes maneuvering that led to this.
AD&D gets I10 Ravenloft II: Gryphon Hill. What is Strahd doing in faraway Mordentshire, working with Azalin the lich? And just as importantly, who's going to foil his plans? Will it be the same adventurers that attacked him last time? This thread of history definitely thickens.
Our 10th AD&D adventure gamebook is a Dragonlance one, Lords of Doom. Penetrate the evil city of sanction. What do you there? The synopsis doesn't say. Would it be too much to hope that you kill them all? Nah. If good won forever, they wouldn't be able to keep milking the gameline.
Marvel gets MH9: Gates of what if? Seems like a standard opposite universe romp.
Finally, Agent 13 get's his 3rd book, Agent 13 and the acolytes of darkness.  Once again the description is pretty sketchy, but I guess this is pulp. You're probably getting exactly what it says on the tin. Fight evil cult, get captured, cliffhanger chapter end, listen to insane monologue, escape deathtrap, win, hooray!

Profiles: Keith Parkinson is another of our well known artists. He used to be a drummer, but decided to become an artist instead because you get more creative control. He was introduced to D&D by a friend, realized that he could do better than their early crop of artists, and went and offered his services. And so he became one of their second wave artists, along with Elmore and Easley. As usual, we see that you've got to be a hard worker to succeed as an artist, and striking a balance between not being put off by criticism, but still learning from the constructive points of it is tricky but useful.
Bruce Heard is our acquisitions coordinator, which means he's another of the poor sods who has to read through hundreds of manuscripts and find the gems amongst the dross. ( Once again we see that as the company has expanded, they raise the bar for allowing new people onboard. ) Born in france to a US soldier and a french woman, he is exceedingly multi-lingual. He first got a job as a translator of D&D stuff, but soon moved on to bigger and better things, and is turning out to be a pretty good writer in his own right as well. He seems to be one of the people who really pushed Mystara in a more high magic direction, which is a good thing in my book. I'm really looking forward to seeing his future contributions to the line.

Fiction: A difficult undertaking by Harry Turtledove. Hmm. Interesting. This is a fairly well known author. What's he doing in here? They must agree with me, because they let him put 9 page story in the magazine. A dramatic tale of barbarians vs civilization, as they try to outwit one another to break a siege, with strongly defined leads on both sides. It manages to stay serious right up to the end, at which point it lapses into using one of the worst puns ever as it's punchline. Which certainly makes it memorable, at any rate. I'm not sure if I should praise him for that, or groan in annoyance. Eh, even if I can't decide if I like it or not, I'm definitely not bored by it, which lets face it, would be worse.

Easy as 1, 2, 3: Rick Swan! Another of my personal fave authors debuts in Dragon. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm is easily quashed, as this turns out to be another boring NPC creation advice piece. Also, Playing out scenarios and questions for your NPC in your head to determine how they'd react? How very amateur dramatics. You can already see why he fit right in in the 2nd ed era. Keep plugging away, honing that craft. Come back when you're ready to give us something really cool.

One roll to go: Hmm. This is a clever little bit of tableage. Want to streamline the rolling of vast amounts of attacks and saves? Determine the odds, roll percentile dice, and consult the tables to determine how many succeed. Can handle up to 20 rolls at once. How very handy. This is definitely one to note down and use when those kobolds unleash their onslaughts of burning arrows and acid flasks. It could probably be refined (d1000 would only take one more die, and increase the precision hugely, saving time that this method wastes resolving rounding errors. ) but it is a great idea. The math wonk in me definitely approves.

Top [secret] gun: Looks like another movie has entered the public consciousness, and is already producing :rolleyes: worthy puns. As you may have inferred, this is about putting fighter planes into Top Secret. A considerably easier thing to do than incorporating nukes, but still a case where the spotlight may be taken by one player, and everyone else has to sit the scene out, or the whole team can wind up dying from a failed roll. So here's a pretty simplified set of rules for flying and air combat. This should keep it from bogging down and taking over entire sessions, allowing you to get back to the espionage. Neither very impressive or utterly crap, this is just another filler article really.

Minimag: Another example of their renewed desire to include random fun stuff to keep the magazine fresh. Here we have a couple of pages of Marvel dioramas built and photographed by Mike Sitkiewicz. How very curious. Once again, this has managed to raise a few smiles, and keep this issue surprising. This is the kind of thing that's cool as an experiment, but I probably wouldn't want to see as a regular feature. I am curious how he managed to get spidey suspended on a thin support like that. Either that thread is stronger than it looks, or there's a hidden wire somewhere.

Cold steel: Gamma world gets another article designed to provide new challenges to higher level PC's. Like the Exterminator, these are a bunch of robots from the past, designed to kick much ass, and now their creators are gone, they simply continue following their programming, causing much inconvenience to anyone who happens to fulfill the wrong criteria. The Cybohunter, the Robohunter, and the Manhunter, each getting increasingly large and deadly (and in the last case, it has lots of ancillary drones, so even if you split up and run away, you're still screwed. ) While nowhere as ridiculous as the giant mecha from issue 101, these are still nothing to be sneezed at, and make considerably more sense in terms of setting integration. With any luck, the cutting down on sci-fi stuff means only the better articles get through, and this is a pretty solid piece.  

Star cops: Looks like playing law enforcement has come to Traveller as well, with this set of rules for playing characters both active and retired. While you might not get as much freedom, you'll definitely face a challenging life. You might want to fudge the rolls a little if you're playing active officers, so all the PC's are kept on the same assignments, and no-one gets stuck in a desk job watching the others go off and have fun. You'll pick up a different set of skills to the military guys, but chances are you can still get pretty badass. Another solid but unexceptional addition to the many many career choices Traveler players now have before them. You could have an entire team without duplicating careers once. Which is a good thing from a niche protection perspective. Now all you've got to do is keep track of where all the rules for the different careers are found.

GURPs fantasy. The first supplement, but not the last. Lets get this treadmill rolling. We spent 5 years developing this. Now it's time to make some profit.

Wormy has a troll toll bridge. The rat is not the brains of the outfit. Dragonmirth has lots of things going wrong. Snarf realizes a year has almost passed and he has to get back quick. Good thing he has a spaceship then.

The official AD&D paint set gets advertised again.

Well, they certainly seem to be keeping to their promises. There have been quite a few surprises in this issue, including some very amusing bits. However, they were also right in saying not all of them would be to everyone's taste, and some of them would be by people who don't necessarily know what they're talking about. And no matter how well considered the editorial policy, they can't turn a sows ear into a silk purse. If they don't have the material to work with, they can't make a truly brilliant magazine. Still hopefully they'll continue to find and deliver a few surprises per issue to keep them from feeling like a waste of time.

Dragon Issue 114: October 1986

part 1/3

108 pages. Hmm. Rather risque cover this month. That veil was totally added on afterwards to sell this pic to a family friendly magazine! I call shenanigans. On the plus side, they're taking halloween seriously this year. But will we be scared? That's the important question. And if so, in what way? Visceral horror? Looming dread? Fear for the future of the hobby? We shall see. Turn the page, open the door, and lets hope the giant bees are friendly.

In this issue:

Letters: A letter from someone who fears the coming of 2nd ed. Will you keep it compatible with the old edition? Can we return our old books for a reduced price on the new ones. David Cook takes the mic to assure everyone that 2nd ed will be as similar as possible, only with the crap bits no-one uses anyway taken out, and the rest better organized. A promise he can probably say he kept.
A letter from someone confused about psionics. Activating a power counts as your attack, maintaining it doesn't. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Holy crap. Someone impersonated Roger Moore at comiccon and managed to fool the entire convention, to the point where he got on panels and answered questions about TSR. Now that's chutzpah. And then he sent a letter telling TSR he'd done this and asked for a job, for doing it so well. Now that crosses the line into full-on insanity. Roger officially apologizes for everyone confused by this. Could people not do that. It's not going to get you a job here, and may well get your ass sued. Ahh, geekery. This is like ripping the hair and clothes off your favorite boyband member if they get too close. It will not endear you to them. Still, it's amusing for the rest of us to read about. Even funnier than their editorials about the satanic D&D rumours, and Arthur Collins' mum writing in to complain.

Forum loses it's definite article. Why do they keep doing that?
Fr Patrick J Dolan has complicated feelings about making gods in the game fightable. Well, being a priest, he would. He comes down with a compromise. While portraying the supreme god as anything less than almighty would be disrespectful,  angels, and most gods from other pantheons are not generally portrayed as so, so PC's should have a chance of tricking or beating them. This can still lead to fun games. And also puts his faith above everyone else's A rhetorical win all round.
Jeannie Whited keeps playing D&D despite the sexism. Well, sorta, as her character has special powers, and the whole game is houseruled to unrecognisability anyway. The point is, she's having fun and hopes other girls aren't put off just because the official rules are stupid.
Joseph Maccarrone thinks putting a hit location system in D&D is stupid. Hit points are not purely a matter of physical toughness. Someone subscribes to the narrative model then. You'll be fighting a losing battle against some of the official writers for a while then
Mark Nemeth thinks that the new typeface and way of heading articles is ugly. Also, how could people want less realistic articles? Everyone wants their games as realistic as possible! You must have read the survey wrong! Uh, yeah. Riiiiiight. The editors will just look at you and shuffle slowly away.
Andy Parris thinks that the rules for two-weapon fighting are completely unrealistic. You can so parry with the off-hand weapon. Yes, but is it balanced? Do you want to see the rise of Drizzt in every campaign?

Witches again. This is the fourth time, not counting the reprint in the first best of. It has been quite some time since the last time, but really, why do it again. Last time was pretty solid. This isn't even that different from last time. Some abilities have been added, others slightly reduced in power, and the formatting is probably better this time around. (apart from the spell table. They really have got to check test printings. I know all too well the pain of what lines up perfectly on the screen coming out wonky. ) Still, is it really that popular? Do they not have enough good new submissions? Is this a response to the recent flare up of sexist accusations, an attempt to pander to their female readers? In any case, this is 12 pages of reheated rehash. A very unsatisfactory start indeed.

Grave encounters: Oh yeah, it's Halloween time. That means spooky articles. Although there is very little spooky about 3 pages of tables. (500 pages of tables full of disturbing entries, a la FATAL, is another matter altogether, of course. ) On the other hand, these are very cleverly done indeed. Tables for random encounters in graveyards. The trick here is that they are sorted not only for degree of corruption, but also time of day, and phase of the moon as well. So adventurers can choose just how brave they are by when the venture into the graveyard, scaling the challenge in a more naturalistic manner. This is a very well done set, both conceptually, and in terms of formatting. I would have no objection to using these at all.

Traveller: 2300! New state of the art edition! Oh, this will result in flamewars.

The elven Cavalier: Like the barbarian cleric, it seems we have another example of forbidding something resulting in people creating a whole new class to fill that void.  So yeah, the elven cavalier, the exemplar of the idea of mounted bowman, riding through the forest, singing tra la la lally and fucking any evil creatures who intrude on their land right up. As is far too often the case with fan-made elf stuff, they gain rather more powers than they sacrifice, when compared to their human counterparts. This is a definite sign of their new commitment to immediate cool stuff over game balance. I find myself pretty much obliged to disapprove. You carry on at this rate, and all the races will have access to every class, ( ) only slightly different for each one, requiring tons of annoying checking to keep track of the differences. And don't even try and sell me the idea that purely fluff based roleplaying hinderances balance out mechanical advantages. I may have fallen for that when I was 15, and the swashbuckler from the complete fighters handbook was all the rage, but I'm not falling for it again. I call twinkitude! Get out of my sight!

Turtlemania rages on! Palladium pimp their primary line at this point strongly.

Quote from: (un)reason;338874Traveller: 2300! New state of the art edition! Oh, this will result in flamewars.

Oh, and how it did... starting weeks after release, and still continuing to this day.

Dragon Issue 114: October 1986

part 2/3

Many kinds of money: Economy, economy, you will be the death of me. A simple currency, based on metals of the highest purity? Such as simple idea could never be allowed here. For if a government wants to control the economy, they must maintain control of the money. And the best way to do that is to separate it from real, objectively measurable things like the gold standard, and create a currency based purely on fiat, trickery, and demand, who's only value is what people agree it's value is. Slightly trickier when you have magic that demands specific values of specific objects (or at least, specific quantities.) and even tricker when you have magic that provides an objective assessment of an object's value that isn't index linked to the local markets. Anyway, the point that this article is making is that having gold, silver, copper, etc pieces that are all exactly the same size and weight, accepted everywhere, is incredibly unrealistic. Oriental Adventures has proved popular enough to prove that gamers are capable of accepting the concept of multiple currencies in their fantasy. So go for it. Put in as much complexity to this as you think you and your players can stand. Remember also that counterfeiting is a rich ground for adventures, on both sides of the law, so you should consider that as a plot hook as well. One of those articles I both approve of, and am wary about actually using, as it could wind up being very dull if done wrong. Eh, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't like a challenge.

The ecology of the Remorhaz: Welcome to our third collaborative ecology (lest you forget, beholders and centaurs also got co-written.) This is not particularly epic, but does have plenty of depth, creating a creature that probably could just about exist in the real world. Of course, making it's metabolism work realistically does involve nerfing it a bit, but unless your players are the sort who like hit and run tactics and harrying their enemy into submission over long periods of time, this is unlikely to be an issue. And if they do try tactics like that, you probably ought to be rewarding them for doing so anyway. There's plenty of stuff here for those who like to capture creatures or harvest them for their organs. Another solid bit of ecological work here.

Combined generation: Ahh here we see one of the reasons they decided to do a new edition. Due to the not particularly brilliant organization, looking up all the tables for character generation has grown increasingly unwieldy as new supplements are introduced. Of course, compiling them in a magazine article may not be the best way to fix it, but they've had the idea, and by gosh they're going to do it, because the page count needs padding at the last minute. Or something, because this feels very much like a filler article, with it's word count and shape edited to fit around the number of adverts. Meh.

Class struggles: Welcome to another rehash. Training to gain levels presents a substantial problem at low levels. You also need to be able to train yourself at higher levels, otherwise it would become impossible to to advance and the state of knowledge would gradually degenerate over generations. It also suffers from D&D's ridiculous union carteled price fixing. This is one case where I have always ignored the rules as written, and the game has not suffered from this at all. This alternate system is slightly more generous in general, but also divides costs up so you have to determine the price for each ability separately. It makes some rather dubious decisions, such as escalating costs for weapon proficiencies (how are they to know what level you are? ) which abilities count as innate, and even the levels at which proficiencies are gained. So yeah, I disagree with both the premise and many of the specifics of this article, and do not intend to use it in any form. Bleah.

It's a hit, but where?: A second hit location system in quick succession? What is this? Alternatives month? At least this one only adds one roll to your attacks, and even then, only sometimes. But is still pretty unsatisfying in other respects, (it really isn't that hard to hit someone in the eye. I could do it as a kid, and I definitely didn't have any class levels) not giving enough detail on what effects losing a limb has. It does get kudos for including hit location tables for flail snails and wolf in sheep's clothings. These humorous touches make it more interesting reading but don't change the fact that this is yet more rehash I have no desire to include in my game.  How very tiresome.

A recipe for espionage: Once again we are confronted with the problem that far too many GM's, presented with Top Secret, just throw the characters into the same old dungeon crawls, reskinned as warehouses and secret bases, where the characters engage in the same old killing and taking of stuff, only with firearms instead of fireballs. And as ever, it's up to the magazine to show them that this is badwrongfun, and they ought to be constructing their adventures more like a James Bond movie, with witty banter, spectacular locations, and actual information gathering being important. The writer weaves visuals that strongly evoke the feel of an 80's tv show, with the camera panning over a beautiful landscape full of shiny houses with expensive cars parked in front of them while a saxophone plays. They attend expensive parties, get picked up by their spymasters to receive assignments in private jets, and use mobile phones the size of bricks and laptops the size of suitcases with pride. They can play it episodic or go for extensive undercover missions. They get assigned bizarre tasks with awkward conditions as part of their training and testing. They can get captured and forced to deal with their enemies maniacal whims, fighting against leopards in nothing but a loincloth. This is entertaining, and often rather silly stuff, that definitely shows the influence of the TV shows and movies of the era. I have no objection to this, although I would urge caution. Don't want to overdo the gonzo, do we.

Robotech coming soon! Another palladium licence. Can this outshine TMNT? We shall see.

Dungeon once again offers you a bargain starting subscription price. And does so with another rather funny advert. They seem to know what they're doing here.

Quote from: aramis;339075Oh, and how it did... starting weeks after release, and still continuing to this day.

Yup. Course, it gets really ugly when they tried to have 2300AD and Megatraveller running concurrently. Who's idea was that?

Quote from: (un)reason;339154Yup. Course, it gets really ugly when they tried to have 2300AD and Megatraveller running concurrently. Who's idea was that?

Marc Miller has stated that he was basically out of the loop once Traveller: 2300 was released, and didn't get back into the loop until GDW folded; he was stuck making board wargames. Essentially, Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, and Tim Brown agreed that 2300 wasn't the OTU, and DGP wanted to revise CT, as fans, and had been a licensee doing VERY well respected 3rd party stuff... and GDW let them do it out-house, working with Marc's idea for a rebellion to shake things up setting wise.

The Rebellion was Marc's idea, as was Virus (for TNE)... so hath said Marc, Loren, and Dave (who inherited the TNE line from Frank and Loren...), as well as Joe Fugate (of DGP).

The hate and discontent over the "two traveller games in print at once" was resolved a couple years in with a rename of 2300. But, also, they had a stock of [Classic] Traveller cores, as well, that continued to sell until about 1989...  So really, they had 3 editions in distribution, with 7 different core options (4x CT: Traveller, Deluxe Traveller, The Traveller Book, Starter Traveller; 2x MT: Boxed set, separate books; 1x 2300: Traveller 2300, later 2300AD.).

Really, it appears that the core GDW staff (Marc, Loren, Tim, Frank) didn't realize that people were associating traveller so strongly with the OTU, and it backfired. Worse, the preview materials in Dragon made it look like it was supposed to be the early history of the OTU... but it wasn't.

Dragon Issue 114: October 1986

part 3/3

Guilty as charged: Top secret gets a second article this month. Sometimes, you get caught by the enemy, and have to be tried for the crimes you commit in the course of your job. Sometimes, you capture the enemy, and will have to serve as witnesses in their trial. And sometimes, you rebel, or get turned into a scapegoat and wind up imprisoned by your own side. And if you mess up, then the agency may well deny your membership, and even it's own existence, and hang you out to dry with the mundane police. Anyway, there's plenty of drama to be had in this scenario, so lets introduce a few optional rules, spin it out a bit longer and allow for a bit more nuance, shall we? Another one I quite approve of. Courtroom drama is a rich ground for roleplaying that doesn't get nearly enough attention, when it's perfectly designed for it, especially LARPing. I'd love to get a chance to play around in that genre for a bit. This would of course involve having players who don't slaughter everything and refuse to negotiate at all, forcing you to kill them instead of surrendering if it looks like they're going to lose. Eh, that's not that rare these days, is it?

The marvel-phile: Rather a long, and slightly nostalgic marvel-phile this month, as we head up to the moon, to see the Inhumans and their stats. Black Bolt, Medusa, Maximus, Crystal, Gorgon, Karnak, and Triton. While they have tremendous powers that have interesting parallels to their mythical namesakes, they are also curiously vulnerable  to disease, pollution, and the other mundane unpleasantness of the earth, which prevents them from living down here long term. They are rather morally ambiguous as a whole, having been both good and bad, and riven by internal conflict. Plenty of interesting plots can be hatched involving them. Jeff also gives us some more info about the differences between the old game, and the new Advanced version. Like OD&D to AD&D, this is really just expansion and clarification rather than a major change. You won't have to do tons of relearning. You do get to define your place in the world better, with more info on contacts and base building. Even editorial screwage can't get Jeff down. He'll just chatter about everything, including his personal life. His star is still very much in the ascendant. Once again I've enjoyed reading his contribution to the magazine.

The dungeoneers survival guide. The first proper AD&D book without Gary at the helm. We still haven't heard anything about that, he's just stopped appearing in the magazine. How very worrisome.

The immortals set. Just in time for christmas. Are you ready to go cosmic! Awesome. Now you can finally win D&D for good.

The role of computers: This month's main review is of Wizards Crown, another adventure game. Explore the world, get stuff, and advance your characters to win back the titular wizard's crown. Make sure you save it frequently, otherwise you may find yourself suffering massive amounts of frustration, because it's a big and tricky game. Ahh, the differences between computer and tabletop RPG's, where this kind of thing is expected. Unlike the first few reviews, this is a game I didn't already know about, so it was interesting on that level. But on another, the novelty is wearing off, and this column is starting to feel like business as usual. I suspect we'll have some dull issues for this as well before it comes to an end.

Running guns: Battletech gets an article this month. As ever, nice to see them covering games they have not done previously. As is often the case, this article tackles something ignored in the main books. Humanoid mechs get all the glory, while boring things like tanks, missile launchers and PPC's get ignored, even when they do actually play a significant part in the battle. Just like the trenches and the planes in WW1. So here we have three new vehicles statted out for your enjoyment. Will they be the crucial tipping point in your fight, or merely cannon fodder? One of those questions I can't answer due to unfamiliarity with the system. Still, as with revenge of the nobodies, and heroic mortal exalted games, getting to see the world from a slightly lower down perspective than the PC default and face the consequences can make for very interesting gaming. So I think I'll give this one a thumbs up.

High-tech hijinks: Our final article is only sorta a sci-fi one, despite being in this section. It's about putting high-tech devices into your fantasy world. Fitting, given Blackmoor is just being released in a new version. Do you want them for a brief crossover (and if so, how will you take them away after the episode is over) or do you want them here for good? Who made it, when and why. And the critical question of how powerful it should be compared to magic and how you differentiate the two. This gives us some pretty specific answers to these questions. Needing batteries and repairs is a good way to take them out of player hands after a bit, weapons should be more powerful than regular ones, but not ridiculously so, buying and selling them should be a bitch, and magitech and bombs should not be allowed. Ok then. Seems pretty sensible. This is not entirely a good thing. Quite a number of games, from shadowrun, to rifts, to d20 modern, will merge magic and technology integrally in the future and be successful, so this advice seems rather dated. Take a few more risks. It's not going to kill you, and if it kills your game, you can just start a new one. Balance is not essential to fun.

Wormy gets to see his horde of new recruits. Dragonmirth plays with our expectations again. Snarf finds claiming the throne is not as simple as he'd hoped.

MERP is once again on the back cover with a new edition. And yet we've never seen an actual article for it, despite years of press. What's up with that? You'd think that given how much of D&D is derived from it, someone would at least try. Are the approvals people a bunch of arseholes?

Not a very good issue at all, with a ridiculously high degree of recycled material, particularly in the D&D bits. The articles covering other games are rather better, especially the top secret ones, but as a whole, this still leaves me unsatisfied. It also demonstrates that covering multiple systems really does make it much easier to maintain interest, as even if you tackle similar topics, the rules and setting quirks means they manifest differently in each game. How will they solve this problem? Believe me, I'm very eager to find out too.

Dragon Issue 115: November 1986

part 1/3

108 pages. Looks like another class special. This time, it's thieves turn, with 6 articles devoted to them. Wait a minute, wasn't the last class special in issue 104 also a thief one? And in 84, they did two cleric specials with nothing else between, in issues 85 and 92. This isn't very symmetrical. What are the editors thinking?  
We also get to see their sales figures again. And it looks like the slow decline has been taking place in earnest. With an average of 108,000, but a latest issue figure of only 101,000, that means they've been losing an average of over 1,000 readers per month this year. Were you one of those people? (Given my current level of enthusiasm, I might well have been one of those people if I was reading at that time. ) Lets hope they can stem that decline. But lets not be too pessimistic. There's still plenty of cool material there. Along with the D&D thieves, there's also quite a bit of top secret material again, which is pleasing.
Also notable is Kim's abrupt departure, leaving Roger in charge of two magazines at once. Can someone fill me in on the behind the scenes stuff that led to this? Lets hope that doesn't result in even more slipshod editing over the next few issues. Looks like having barely recovered from the last big shakeup, there's going to be some more in the near future. This is morbidly interesting.

In this issue:

Letters: The introduction of a computer column has obviously resulted in a lot of mail for them, mostly positive. They've printed five of them, with a mix of questions and suggestions. This means it's future is pretty much assured for quite some time. Roger is surprisingly cagey in response to this, not wanting to promise anything he can't deliver. Curious. At least something's going right around here. You ought to capitalize on that.

Forum: John M Maxstadt makes another appearance, this time complaining about last month's cover, and the general amount of cheesecake in the art. It's demeaning to women, it's bad for the hobby, and it's just plan embarrassing to explain to my nongamer friends. Woe, woe and woe some more.
Paul Astle doesn't know how to stop players from abandoning your game in search of more munched out ones, but he has some advice on how to please the people still here. Even one-on-one games can still be fun if done right. Don't get discouraged. If you don't even try, you're definitely going to lose.
David Howery thinks that a second edition is a good idea, but making stuff from OA part of it is not. He also thinks that doing profiles on the staff members that include photos is a good way to stop impersonators. You're going to be pretty happy then.
Raymond Chuang has some thoughts about the interesting hassles PC's could face setting up a business. Any business with a wizard can massively outperform it's competitors, which may cause economic troubles and union unrest. Also, magical byproduct pollution can cause all sorts of hassle. Both are pretty good plot hooks, really.

Lords of the night: Thieves guilds. Huh. What are they good for? Quite a lot actually.  Organized crime has quite substantial benefits. Training, specialized equipment, gossip and info, meeting new people, fencing your ill-gotten gains, infiltrating the legal system and making sure members don't get in too much trouble when caught.  It's no wonder that to be a successful thief, you need to be in one, especially with AD&D training requirements being what they are. Here's another nice but unexceptional worldbuilding article that deconstructs things like demographics, how these organizations are created, joined and maintained, how they differ, how they will usually be the same, and how they relate to the world in general. Not that fascinating to me now, but one to bookmark for when I actually get the chance to build another gameworld.

A den of thieves: So, you've reached name level, and now you want to set up your own thieves guild. Congratulations, and good luck, you'll need it. Vince Garcia (now there's a name that sounds like a mafioso boss in itself) gives us lots of cool advice on how to make the life of a character trying to set up an organization interesting. While obviously focussed on crimelords, the lessons from this can be applied to other classes with a little conversion as well. Political maneuvering, constructing a proper hierarchy, with chains of command, specialist groups, and all that jazz. Raising money, dealing with the other local power blocs, breaking away from your current guild, this is all very solid stuff. It's also backed up mechanically with lots of tables, which alter the types of followers you get, and the odds of having run-ins with the law. Far better than the first article, this would definitely be of great use in actual play, not just worldbuilding, expanding the domain management system for rogues, and helping you zoom out and experience months of politicking in a session. And you ought to know by now I'm very much in favour of that. Are you ready to play D&D, Godfather style? Yes, I'm talking to you. There's nobody else here, so I must be talking to you.

Space/fantasy gamer is back. I didn't even know they were gone. What's up with that?

The art of climbing walls: Vince returns, (but gets his last name misspelled) to give us one of those really zoomed in examinations of an aspect of the game. How exactly does climbing walls work? Thieves are not spiderman, able to just scuttle up sheer walls using their fingers. You need ropes and grappling hooks and tiger claws, and other fun little implements to have a decent chance on smooth surfaces with no handholds. He alters the probabilities for climbing slippery surfaces quite substantially, and generally makes things a bit trickier. This is one of those fiddly little articles that suffers because even if it may be an improvement, the annoyance caused by looking it up when you're in mid play balances that out, especially if you try and use lots of them, from different issues. Same old problem.

Honor among thieves: Ahh, here's another unsurprising article. Although they make their money breaking the law, any successful thieves guild must have some code of it's own to keep things from falling apart. Even if they never formalize it, stuff like no squealing, no lying about your hauls, double agents will have their membership terminally revoked, and no going after people with "relationships" with the guild is pretty much going to happen anyway. And many of them do dress it up in formal oaths and pledges to make things absolutely clear to dumb n00bs, and give standardized punishments for breaking them. And then they're just a few steps away from becoming law enforcement themselves, Pratchett style. Funny how they do wind up becoming just another accepted part of society, with their own training system and accepted path of advancement. In the real world, far too many criminals are criminals because of mental illness, poverty, or inability to get a good above board job, you can go up and down in people's esteem based on what you've done recently rapidly, and any code they have is honored in the breach as much as the observance. Almost make you want to live in a D&D world. The math on the economics may not add up, but it makes perfect sense on it's own terms, there's a place for everyone, plenty of opportunity for you to advance your station, and the people who get into power do on the whole deserve it and have worked for it. Anyone else think so? Or is this another sign I've been doing this for too long and going mad?

Getting up in the world: A second article in quick succession on climbing? I guess that given the evidence of the last couple of issues, they really have made a conscious decision to present multiple differing views on a topic. Well, I guess embracing the rehash and trying to turn it into a positive thing is one way to deal with it. This one also turns it's attention to non-thieves climbing ability. One good thing about the new Non-weapon proficiency system is that it does allow other classes to at least try things they really should be able to do. The problem is that it has inconsistencies with previous writings on the subject. Should you try and reconcile the two lists of modifiers, or treat them as independent subsystems and apply one or the other. Lots of tedious rules minutinae, in other words. It is however, interesting that this one was obviously written after the first one, by people which had read it. That kind of co-ordination between their writers is pleasing, and definitely something I could stand to see more of.

Dragon Issue 115: November 1986

part 2/3

Tools of the (thieving) trade: Mr Garcia continues to prove that he is the don of all things larcenous, examining the tools thieves need for their other abilities, the penalties they suffer for going without them, and how they can improve their odds further by spending a little more. Ninja outfits to improve your stealth skills face paint, hearing cone (with protection from ear seekers, of course.) drills, 10 foot poles for springing traps if you aren't willing to risk disarming them the subtle way, and all sorts of other fun. Which doesn't come cheap, but such is life. As once again, the same writer is taking the reins, this ties in well with the other articles, building on them without too much overlap. While the individual articles in this month's theme haven't been exceptional, they have been very well tied together. We haven't seen them try stuff like this for over three years, in the psionics special. You need writers who are active, and get their stuff in early, so the other writers can work on the idea and produce further material to make this work. And someone with the ambition to co-ordinate it all. If this is what having Roger as an editor means, then it will be a welcome change to the last few years.

Hammer of thor, spear of zeus: Hello to another power-up to the class that least needs it. Giving clerics the option of learning a weapon appropriate to their deity seems like a pretty reasonable idea, if a a mild power-up. Giving them not only access to a new weapon, but the ability to multiple specialize in it to indefinite degrees, gaining an extra +1 to hit each time; on the other hand, makes them almost the equal of fighters in terms of attack progression, while still having all the spellcasting of clerics. Definitely an option that has the power to mess up a game at higher levels. Exercise caution about allowing it in your game.

Sharper than a serpents tooth: Sssssnakeses. Looks like this is this month's realistic biology contribution. The nature of their senses, biology, methods of attack, and 12 new sets of stats, which are generally more powerful than the original entries. This is probably a case where the writers like what they're writing about a little too much. Still, like spiders, they do provoke instinctive fear in people, making them great for a little horror gaming. Mix some of these variants with your yuan-ti, and people'll never be sure what's going to strike at them when they open a door. Another competent but unexceptional article.

Airs of ages past: Harps! Now there's an unexpected topic for elminster to turn his eye too. All 9 items in this article have a common origin, the lost city of Myth Drannor. Well, elves have always been fond of music. In addition to the various cool magical powers they possess, Ed also proves he knows what he's talking about when it comes to the technical aspects of music. Either he's already a musician, or this is another case of him putting a whole load of research in for accuracy in minor technical details that most people wouldn't notice. These are as flavourful as ever, with Jhantra's harp a particular favorite of mine. In any case this is another great entry that is both entertaining reading, and full of things I'd love to incorporate. Music is a big part of mythology, (often the medium for telling it as well) and it probably gets less airtime than it deserves in roleplaying. While incorporating it into your game and not being horribly cheesy may be a challenge, it's one that amply pays for itself if you succeed.

There's something on the floor: And it's not a crawling pit. This is some quick and dirty old skool tableage, designed to provoke paranoia in your players. The floor should be the one thing you can always rely on, right? If the ground beneath your feet is unstable, everything else is definitely going to be messed up. Muahahahaha. Be it just an unusual appearance, or something that actually has a mechanical effect, having things happen to the ground beneath their feet really forces players to think, as the usual methods of fighting the enemy aren't going to work here. And since it's all on a random table, you can insert this easily into your endless dungeon building kit. The specific effects are both inventive and well organized as well, making this one I'd take great pleasure in using on my /victims/ players. Two thumbs up.

The ecology of the harpy: Looks like we have another musically connected article this month. Harpies may have beautiful voices, but they are nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing as a well crafted harp. When you consider that they're also cowardly, bickering creatures who'll turn on the weak amongst their own numbers, they definitely don't make the case for music being a great unifier.  
For a second time, we also have a case of the writing being handled by multiple people, with a freelancer contributing the first bit of fiction, while Ed provides the footnotes, with assistance from Elminster. The change in tone between the sections is quite noticeable, but that's probably a good thing. We get plenty more details on their lifecycle, tactics, and modifiers you can apply to the saves against their abilities. This is both interesting in itself, and as part of their new trend towards collaboration, on a historical level. After all, most RPG books these days from the big companies have a whole load of developers, writers, editors, art people, etc  listed, to the point where you can't really put a single name on the spine. Whereas most of the early D&D books do. (and it is frequently Gygax, even when it's made obvious that others contributed quite a bit inside.) Another change that's definitely worth noting and pondering. After all, most fiction books aren't written like that, it's more the purview of textbooks and guides to things. What do you make of this?

Elven armies and dwarves at arms: We return to another recent subject, that of more detail in our follower tables. This time it's demihuman fighters that get the badass strike teams. All the new racial variants from UA are covered, including the dread forces of the valley elves. (which do not include any stubby gnomes, curiously) Generally, these are fewer in numbers, but more individually powerful than their human equivalents, as demihumans are usually at least 1st level. No great surprises here, as long as you are familiar with D&D's implied setting. As with the previous ones, I find it hard to complain about the extra complexity introduced here, since you only get to use it once a PC's career, and you really want to make a big deal out of it. Still, I would have preferred it if they'd tackled other classes first, before going back to ones they've already done before.

Door number one, door number two, or: Hmm. More rehash. We've already had an article on doors, by Ed and Elminster, no less. Thankfully, this writer doesn't try and compete with that in sheer brilliance, but instead goes for quantity of ideas, giving us 50 brief tricks you can pull with your doors. Just the thing to put in your random dungeon design tables, just for extra sadism. Suspect everything. More quick and dirty old skool fun.

Stayin' alive: There's no resurrection in Top Secret.  So you have lots of incentive to not die. Last month they gave lots of general GM'ing advice. This time it's players turn to get a general how too. This is both the usual character building advice, and lots of tactical advice for actual play. From first equipping for a mission, to scouting, to conflict, to the cleaning up of loose ends afterwards (and believe me, you want to do that, or it will come back and bite you in the ass) there are lots of ways of increasing your odds of success. Some of them are metagame considerations, while others are applicable to any system, and indeed real life as well. Apart from the strong emphasis on trying to play the game in a genre appropriate way, with recurring characters, romances etc, this is pretty standard, if with rather more width and depth than most of these pieces. Above average in terms of craftmanship, but nothing really leaps out at me.  

GURPS autoduel: Roleplaying in the setting of car wars. Well, it's a good test of the universal part of it's name. If all it really does well is fantasy or modern day, they might as well not bother.

Dragon Issue 115: November 1986

part 3/3

The role of books:Lords of the middle dark by Jack L Chalker (boo hiss spit) gets a fairly middle of the road review. It has his usual disturbing penchant for mindfucking his female protagonists, and spends a lot of time in worldbuilding to the detriment of advancing the plot. As you may gather, I'm rather less fond of Mr Chalkers work than this reviewer, and from the sounds of it, I'd hate this one just as much as the books of his I have read.
The A.I Gang books (various authors) are a series of computer/ spy adventure books. The science is pretty loose, but then, this is high action pulp adventure. You don't expect realism from james bond, do you? Aimed at younger readers, these seem like the kind of thing that might have drawn people to gaming, back in the 80's.
The find your fate books are another set of multiple choice adventure books. These particular ones star the Dr Who crew. These very much bear the mark of bulk-written tie in products, with wildly uneven quality of writing and characterization. David Martin's one pleases the reviewer. Michael Holt's one most definitely does not. Same problem as gaming fiction, really.
God game by Andrew M Greeley has the author doing exactly that, inserting himself into the story as the god of a computer controlled world. How very meta and prophetic. He uses this device to pose complicated philosophical and theological questions with a directness most books cannot, while maintaining a strong edge of humour. Sounds really rather tempting to me.
Flight to thlassa mey by Dennis McCarty is written with dialogue in shakespearean blank verse, amazingly. That must take a lot of crafting. This elevates it above the generic fantasy it would seem to be from the cover, giving it both depth and a very distinctive flavour. This is an excellent example of how borrowing and incorporating the right ideas in the right way can make a work seem fresh.
The throne of scone by Patricia Kennealy steals liberally from another source, this time celtic myth, to create the kind of mythic tinged sci-fi that would not be unfamiliar to stargate viewers. The maxim about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic is out in full force here, in another bit of epic storytelling.
Merlin's Booke by Jane Yolen is a loosely connected set of short stories about guess who, the legendary archmage. Each takes a different perspective and tone, combining prose and (pretty good) poetry. This shows that by weaving together multiple, sometimes conflicting accounts, you can create a real seeming overall picture of something. Touch magic, pass it on.

When only the best will do: Top secret continues to come off well from the dropping of the Ares section, with a second article this month, full of gun pr0n. Heckler and Koch are one of the biggest weapons companies in the world, producing great weapons used all around it. You know, fetishising a particular companies weapons is like doing so for Katanas just because they're japanese. I am rather suspicious of this article, and suspect there may be power creep in the stats therein. Hmm. Is this also going to be a new trend of the Moore years?

The teasing for traveller 2300 last issue is elaborated on. Just like movie trailers. Vague one, more specific one, big one with "In a time" gravelly voiced narration showing all the really cool bits.

Profiles: Roger Moore, aka Rogar of Mooria, is of course our first subject this month. He is neither a barbarian or a clone, nor does he resemble a potato. He is, however, an ex army boy, and started writing while still on duty, during his many dull hours. Somehow, he managed to become our second most prolific and reliable freelance contributor, proving juggling multiple jobs like this can be done. (so there, JD Webster ) And once again, he is going to have to do a ridiculous amount of work, as Kim's recent departure has resulted in him becoming head editor of both Dragon and Dungeon. Will he hold up to having two full time jobs as well as he did having one plus a highly active sideline? His run lasted many years, so I assume so. It's going to be interesting seeing how his leadership changes the magazine over the next few years.
Bill Larson is one of our book editors. One of the older members of staff, he doesn't seem to be that much of a D&D player, but has had a long and interesting life. (although after editing the Trixie Belden Mystery series for 15 years, anything would seem interesting.) Once again, the amount of lighthearted humour seems to be on the rise again. Not sure if that's the because of the writing or the change in editor.

TSR previews is back again, and hopefully this time will be remaining the right way around. D&D is getting M3: Twilight calling. As with the previous master level books, the universe is at stake. Guess who has to save it, again. :rolleyes:
AD&D gets RS1: Red Sonja Unconquered. Visit Hyboria. Meet interesting people, kill them, and then wonder where you're going to put their stuff when you're wearing nothing but a chainmail bikini. One cleavage can only contain so much.
Our adventure gamebooks are up to number 11, Clash of the sorcerers. The trilogy comes to it's exciting conclusion. Will you triumph, or fail?
Marvel gives us two books this month. For the solo players, we have The Wolverine in Night of the Wolverine. So important they had to put his name on there twice. If you can find a friend to fight against, you can play Fantastic 4 vs Dr Doom in The Doomsday Device in their 8th one on one gamebook. Dr Doom has created a giant robot. Can you guess who has to stop it? Yeah, it's like that. They aren't very subtle with their titles.

An interstellar armory: More bits and pieces for your star frontiers space battles. Armor, forcefields, lasers, tractor beams, bombs, anti-missiles, mines, cloaking, all pretty generic sci-fi stuff. I'm pretty sure we've seen most of these in the magazine before, and I'm surprised that they aren't in the books anyway. In any case, this is a load more not very interestingly done recycling. If you don't have counters to basic tricks like this, you're never going to become an advanced space general.

The marvel-phile: Rather a short article this month, as Jeff gives us the stats for Terminus, who is essentially a ridiculously powerful intergalactic scrap merchant. Seems about the normal level of ridiculousness for a fantastic four villain. Still, destroying the world is no laughing matter, and he certainly has the potential to do that. He's already been killed once, but we know that's no obstacle here, and someone else out there might have a similar giant robot body. Another pretty formulaic entry here, that shows up just how many hidden lands full of weird stuff the Marvel earth has. Are your PC's powerful enough to face a guy like this?

Wormy faces an insidious threat from his miniatures ranks. Dragonmirth catches tigers with velcro. Everything hangs in the balance for snarf.

The rolemaster companion makes the game even more comprehensive and flexible! Buy it now, etc etc.

Looks like collaboration is definitely on the up this month, along with power creep and humour, and recycling is still pretty common. Course, it's too early to say for sure what this change in leadership really bodes for the magazine. You can't make an accurate graph from a couple of points of data. Still, overall, this has been a pretty interesting issue, with both good and interestingly bad articles (as opposed to the more frequent dull, but not so bad as to be interesting ones) Maybe the golden age of the magazine is over, but that certainly doesn't mean there's nothing happening. If anything, there's more stuff going on than ever, so one story can't hold everyone's attention and become legendary in the same way. Just keep telling myself. I only have to read the bad bits once, then I can use the good bits again and again. Not a very poetic mantra, is it? Doesn't have to be. Just has to keep me going.

Dragon Issue 116: December 1986

part 1/3

111 pages. We're pink! The magazine now looks almost exactly like it did when I started reading! Nostalgia city! However, I assure you that I will not let matters of presentation bias me as to the quality of the articles. For some reason, they've decided to go with the aquatic theme this christmas. Nothing wrong with getting a little wet now and then. As long as the boring bits get glossed over. We don't want it to end up like the wind waker, do we? (well, there are worse things to base your games off) Lets see if this issue is a mighty battleship, or a waterlogged little rowing boat.

in this issue:

Letters: One letter about giving individual hit locations their own hit points. Roger gives an alternative method that doesn't require so much bookkeeping, but still adds a load of extra prepwork beforehand. Meh.
Two letters that think that as D&D is now starting to decline in popularity, the magazine ought to start devoting a greater proportion of it's space to other games systems. Not a bad idea. Roger gives the response that that's not what our survey repliers thought. We mustn't forget our core demographic. Oh, compromise, compromise. At least they aren't taking the route certain modern cable channels do and almost completely abandoning their original theme.

Forum: Craig Sessions tells the tragic tale of a girl who couldn't get anyone to join her game, just because she was a girl. How dumb are these people?! Was open sexism still that common in the 80's? Even if it was, you'd think at least a few would say yes simply because they want to score with her, as this is high school. Madness.:shakes head: It's as bad as the girl bassist in my class who was always complaining about exactly the same thing with respects to finding a band. Do they not understand basic principles of visual appeal and audience identification. Oh well. Their loss.
Dan Thompson thinks that save or instantly die poison is lame. High level characters shouldn't go out like that! Keep whining, little star, and eventually your wish will come true.
Alan D Long thinks that D&D ought to be targeted towards older people as well. There's a big untapped market with tons of disposable income just waiting for you. You could definitely be marketing the game better to increase your fanbase.
Niel Brandt gives a load of supplemental material for the mariner. This is pretty cool stuff, and still doesn't make them anywhere near as powerful as primary spellcasters, so I'd allow it.  
Archie Li thinks that using humour in D&D should be done carefully, otherwise player suspension of disbelief may be destroyed. It's one thing to have IC jokes, but when they're built into the rules, it's just silly.
Chris Sanyk thinks that using batteries as a limiter for your high tech items is a good idea, but may run into source emulation problems. What makes a good show and what makes a good game are not the same things, you know.
James A Yates is in favour of nonweapon proficiencies, and feels that the longlived nonhuman races ought to have more. A perfectly reasonable statement that opens up a whole can of worms when it comes to game design, and still results in the odd flamewar today. Let the battle commence.
John Goldie is confusticated about the adjudication of illusions. Which considering they have a whole class devoted to them, is a big problem. Someone oughta do an article on it. Careful what you wish for. Both times they sent out a call like that, they wound up with a whole bunch of stuff, much of it contradictory. A special like that, with several different alternatives on how to handle illusions, would send the canonwankers into a frenzy of frustrated fapping.

To go with the dungeoneers survival guide, we now have the wilderness survival guide as well. Isn't that great news. At least Kim's departure didn't result in him pulling the work he'd already done. The company has enough problems on it's plate at the moment.

High seas: Sailing! In the real world, a huge number of our most renowned explorers and adventurers have been famed for their ocean voyages. It's full of hazards, both environmental and from creatures and people, and you get to see all sorts of cool stuff. It's also a perfect justification for episodic troupe play, with a large cast of characters, but only some of them taking part in each individual adventure, because someone has to stay back and take care of the ship and supplies while you explore the insides of the isle of dread, or whatever; while the fact that each adventure is on a different island, or is simply separated by several hundred miles of coastal sailing means you don't have to worry so much about your actions in one place having repercussions everywhere else. (at least, not straight away ) A very promising topic indeed. And our first article sets off to cover the details of sailing a ship, with a long and well integrated set of fluff and crunch. Lots of statistics, how you fought with them, how many crew members they needed, how much they could carry, maintenance, fighting giant sea monsters, this is a solidly researched, comprehensive stuff that richly deserves the pole position. It does skirt on the edge of dullness at times, and the crunch'll probably take a few readings to fully digest, but it still looks like pretty useful stuff. Another of the things everyone should try at least once, seafaring adventures are a great way to visit new lands, kill their inhabitants and take their stuff, while skimming over the months of dull wilderness travel needed to get there. And you can even do bottleneck politics on the way. Now, if only the magazine were telling us that, instead of leaving it up to me to virtually construct my own little article out of tangents.

Children of the deep: At last. A PC writeup for aquatic elves. It's about time. Like most demihumans of this era, they don't get that great class abilities. But they do have fairly good innate powers, and some restrictions on their ability to function on land, so it balances out. Crossbreeds between normal and aquatic elves, on the other hand, are a bit twinked, (plus what is my place in the world angst, yay :rolleyes: ) with most of the advantages of both parents. Aquatic half-elves are also pretty good. If you have any seafaring or water adventures in your game, they will really leave everyone else in the dust unless they have some serious magic to compensate with. Another thing that can cause problems in a mixed party, and would be nerfed to bits in 4E. Consider carefully before allowing. It could be fun, but could also be an almighty pain in the ass to design adventures for

Dragon Issue 116: December 1986

part 2/3

The ecology of the minotaur: Hmm. Another new writer applies a different approach to the ecology series this month. We see the in game writer of the article captured by the creature he is studying, and having to survive by their wits and currying favour with the creature, instead of seeing them as just some scientific specimen to be hunted, examined and possibly dissected. This is an approach that would be used quite a few times during my reading, sometimes with the writer escaping, and sometimes with them being presumed dead, but somehow having managed to hide or send their writings for future discovery. This is a development I approve of. The actual ecological bit, I find rather less enthralling, for it takes a monster that has rather interesting mythological origins, and turns them into just another generic primitive humanoid race, fighting, raiding and mating with harems of female minotaurs. Damn you, family friendly policy! (Although they still have no trouble with the idea of hags being all female and producing offspring by mating with human males by force and trickery, but I guess the great rape double standard strikes again.) The ecological footnotes are rather halfhearted this month as well, not really adding much to them mechanically. Still an interesting entry, but overall subpar, given the series' general high standards.

The dragon's bestiary is back! Bumped off for Gary's featured creatures in issue 62, and then replaced by the Creature Catalogs, they've resurrected it due to public demand. Because the public hunger for new monsters is insatiable, but you don't want to give them too many at once, and then none for ages. This collection of monsters are all following the aquatic theme. So lets take a look at them.
Brain coral is exactly what is sounds like. Psychic Coral that physically resembles an load of lobes spread across the sea floor. Not that much they can do with that intelligence on their own, so they are likely to probe your mind and take over your body. I can see the entertainment possibilities in this.
Sea centaurs are to tritons and hippocampi what regular centaurs are to humans and horses. Which means they're rather smarter and more powerful, but still not as smart as their related species. (why are tritons and sahuguin so damn clever? What do they actually do with all that supposed intelligence? ) No great surprises here.
Giant carnivorous clams may not sound dangerous, but if your stuck inside them, you're in big trouble. And they have a surprising number of tricks to help them do this. Tentacles, paralyzing neurotoxin clouds, maneuvering jets. They're not just some sessile particle filterer you can ignore when not pearl diving.
Giant groupers will lurk in an underwater alcove, suck you in if you get too close, and swallow you whole. Better have something sharp to cut your way out with, and make Wormy proud.
Morana are really vicious eel/pirahna hybrids. Be thankful they don't come in large groups, because then the party would be in trouble.
Giant porcupine fish inflate themselves to look extra threatening. Considering they have save or die poison all over, you'd think they could be a little more secure in their masculinity.
Electric rays do exactly what they say on the tin, unleashing an electric charge to stun prey. And you, if you threaten them. Not a good idea to rub these guy's belly.
Sawfishes and sharks, like hammerheads, are an example of nature imitating tools. Or maybe vice versa. In any case, they look funny, but don't laugh when they chop you up and eat you.
Giant sea anemone will grapple you with their tentacles, and grip you with thousands of spines. That's really going to be a bugger to escape from. Another example of just how weird real undersea creatures look.
Sea titans are another aquatic relation of a well known land thing. Relations of poseidon, (if you're using a pseudoearth mythology) they are bigger and stronger than regular titans, but nowhere near as smart or magically powerful. They're still no pushovers, especially as they usually have various sea monstery friends. Even if you beat them, that may be just the beginning of your troubles, given how vindictive gods can be. Approach with caution, for even if they're friendly, their moods can turn on a dime.
Undines already appeared in the D&D companion set, you idiot. Someone needs to maintain better editorial control. Unless this is another case of them doing it deliberately to differentiate the two IP's. Anyway, these are sneaky little faeish bastards who enjoy drowning sailors. As if we didn't have enough of those.
Weed giants are larger, less subtle relations of Kelpies. They'll tangle you up, and use your corpse as fertilizer. You'll have to do a lot of hacking to get to their vulnerable areas. Beware dark water. You never know what lurks just beneath the surface. (cue jaws theme)

Hello? your majesty?: This article is only peripherally connected to the sea theme, but is still an invaluable topic they haven't got round to covering before. Communicating over long distances before the modern era was a slow, and often exhausting and inconvenient business. Here's plenty of examples of how it was handled in different real world eras, plus some more speculation on how you could use magic to speed this process in place of technology in a fantasy world. With an extensive bibliography, this is a good example that there are still tons of things for them to still do, they just need to hunt them down. Lets hope they don't wind up rehashing this one like they have so many others. Definitely one to mine for ideas when worldbuilding.

High seas in 3D: This month's centerpiece is another build it yourself effort. Cut out the cardboard pieces and build your own ship. How very appropriate for the nautical issue. Exactly what kind of ship it is is a bit vague, and of course size will depend on the scale of the miniatures you use with it, but this is another cool little centrepiece that I can definitely see the uses for. Dennis Kauth is definitely pulling his weight around here these days. Good luck putting it together. (they advise making photocopies so you can practice to get it right, which definitely implies a few of the staff members struggled with this one. ) As ever, any stories of how you actually used this in actual play would be very welcome.

Rogue stones and gemjumping: Elminster reveal to Ed another of his little secrets for living a long, exciting and twinky life without dying horribly. Gemjumping allows you to enchant a special stone so you can teleport to it later without all that awkward rigamarole of verbal, somatic and material components that someone can disrupt. Just the thing for when you're captured, tied up, or caught off guard. If you're extra clever, you can give it to someone, and use it as a way to get into places you haven't explored without the awkward risk of misfiring teleporting offers. A short article, but another demonstration of both how cool his writing is, and how he can wind up being seen as twinky. Even if individual items are balanced for their level (after all, this is basically just a slight variant on word of recall.), he knows so many tricks and synergies that his characters will legitimately trounce any regular character of the same level. This is why wizards and priests should go into the spell and item design business as soon as they're high enough level. It gives them a huge advantage over people who just use whatever they can research from old grimoires and take from things they've killed.

Dragon Issue 116: December 1986

part 3/3

By tooth and claw: Ha. Someone thinks real animals aren't scary enough in D&D? The game where a 1st level character has a less than even shot at beating a housecat. Where any animal with a claw/claw/bite routine can take on a party of similar numbers and HD and trounce them unless the spellcasters spot them and get off their artillery spells before they can close. Where a whole load of creatures have save or die poison on every bite. I regard your statement with amusement. The problem is merely because D&D PC's scale so massively as they level up, and most creatures remain static, so what is a near impossible challenge at 1st level is a cakewalk by 10. You want a skill based system like Runequest or Storyteller mate, where even after years of play, you're still not even twice as powerful in terms of total stats. So yeah, this is another realism in gaming article, that has some sound tactical advice, (even normal animals are smart enough to pull tricks like ambushes and learn how to deal with traps.) but is mostly a waste of time built on a premise that's pretty dubious anyway. I've certainly always used plenty of natural animals in amongst the weird stuff in my games. Yawn.

High ones, Ancient ones: Looks like they're continuing to push the boundaries of covered games, with this article for Elfquest. Actually, they have covered these before, way back in issue 66, but that was adapting the characters to AD&D. Now they have their own BRP based system to play with. Here we get stats for the High ones, which seem to be your stereotypical physically weak, but mentally powerful ancient race/alien types. Their disadvantages probably don't balance out their powers, but since both are pretty hefty, they probably won't overshadow everyone else all the time. An interesting article that gives me plenty of insights into the setting of a world I've never really got into, but am tempted to do so now. By that criteria, I think we can safely say this article is a good one.

The role of computers is starting to ease into the swing of things, having received plenty of mail by now. So a few ground rules need to be set, as they make clear what they are not going to do. (so don't send us whining mail about that. ) Ho hum. You can only do so much. So you've gotta try and please the largest audience. Anyway, this month's main review is of Dragonfire II. A tremendously customizable game, this allows you to build characters, monsters, places, and even run battles. It can be used to handle the mathematical bits for all sorts of roleplaying games, with a minimum of effort. Just the sort of thing they ought to be letting us know about in this column. Anyone use this back in the day? Seems like it would be even more useful these days, with the massive increase in memory sizes and portability of laptops.
Our other review is a more conventional computer game. Bards Tale. Train up your team to fight Mangar the dark. An integral part of this is keeping your Bard well sozzled so he can sing songs to buff the rest of the party Even the city streets are incredibly dangerous. But if you already have experienced characters from Wizardry or Ultima III, you can convert them over. It is a bit grindy, with big fights you can't run away from, and you have to get all the way back to the adventurers guild each time to save and level up. So you need to be a careful tactician to advance far. This is not a game that mollycoddles you, but the reviewers have no objection to that.

TSR Previews: Not a lot of stuff coming up next month. AD&D gets H2: The mines of bloodstone. Following on from H1, this aims to prove that AD&D can do epic high level adventures too. Right on the other end of the scale, we have N4: Treasure hunt, for 0 level characters. Can you survive in a battle between goblins and orcs using only your wits? Good luck, you'll need it. Somewhere in the middle, we have DA2: Temple of the frog. Go back in time, both in and out of the game, to see this redone, expanded adventure from the very second supplement for OD&D. Not a brilliant name, but a lot scarier and more complex than it seems.

The marvel-phile: Jeff continues to mix the silly with the serious with aplomb. Because lets face it, the marvel universe has far too many silly characters to only do one a year for april. We get Crossfire, who is deadly serious, despite having a very silly outfit (posing pouch for vampire hunting strippers, hee) and will turn heroes against each other given half a chance. We also get another amusingly themed supervillain team, the Death Throws. Ringleader, Oddball, Tenpin, Bombshell and Knickknack. All specialize in throwing objects related to their name. Beyond parody, isn't it? Jeff is fully aware of that, and loving it, taking time to hone his faux editorial banter along the way. He's becoming almost as entertaining a writer as Ed. Will he keep his promise to bring us the Marauders next month? Does Roger ever really get to recline on a sofa with his workload? All will be revealed soon enough.

Skyrealms of jorune! Another fascinating new game starting soon. Will we see articles for this one?

Dr who?: Oh, this is nice. Another game we've seen around for quite a while actually gets an article dedicated to it. And we just had some Dr Who reviews last month. Curious that it's appearances in the magazine should be on the up just as the tv series is about to go into terminal decline.
Anyway, here we get to see stats for all 6 currently extant incarnations of the Doctor. Which they ought to have in the game anyway, but apparently these ones are corrected :sigh: Errata, errata, do you really matter? Anyway, this gives us a good idea of what they system looks like, apparently a fairly simple attribute and ability based one with a scale of 1 to 6. If you're interested in the show, you may well be tempted by this, but mechanically, nothing here seems particularly groundbreaking. Eh, as long as it does the job, and provides for fun games, it doesn't matter if it's complex or simple. And since the Doctor is probably at the upper end of the system's power level, it should be even simpler for regular PC's.

Aim and burn: Flamethrowers! Like their low tech D&D variant, throwing vials of flaming oil, these are highly effective weapons that are far too often ignored. What could be more fun than watching your enemies scream as you melt their face, while you laugh maniacally? For some reason, this article introduces them to the Traveller system. We get several models, rules for the special effects they have on things and creatures hit by them, plus a load of implied setting about the manufacturers to better integrate them into the setting. In another case of retro-future anachronisms that we wouldn't see in games today, we also have stats for  asbestos spray, which you obviously use to counter fire attacks. We shall assume that they've found a way to keep you from getting cancer if you spray it all over your body. Definitely an article I enjoyed more than I really should

Snarfquest continues to build up tension for the final showdown. Dragonmirth features the wrath of god. Wormy sets up that old classic, a pit trap.

Quite a good issue, overall. Both the themed bits and the general articles have an above average number of good articles, keeping this one fairly pleasurable to read. And even the ones I'm not so keen on, the minotaur and animal ones, are annoying in ways I could actively disagree with, rather than simply being boring. This is pretty pleasing. It's nice to end the year on an up note, after having found the average quality to be a good deal lower than the previous three years. Hopefully Roger'll avoid getting bored and burnt out in turn for quite a while, and the magazine'll sustain that over the next year. We might have slowed down, but I'm not stopping 'til this is over, one way or another. There's still way too much to see for that.